Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, Mr. Chair, we realize we have some major challenges, especially for the community infrastructure, lack of staff housing for teachers, the challenge we’re facing of just having the services being delivered in our communities where we still have students leaving their home communities to go to the regional centres to attend high school because we don’t have high school in all our communities. I think, as a government, the reason that you have a policy and the guidelines in place is so that we can accomplish that. If this government’s going to back away now at the 11th hour, I think all the work that
the communities are trying to do by ensuring we can provide an education and curriculum for our communities which is somewhat close to or basically meets the qualifications in other schools so that we can provide all these services to all schools in the Northwest Territories, we’re never going to get there.
I’d just like to get some assurance from this government that basically the guidelines that you mentioned are spelled out. The intention of that was to ensure that we’re able to provide those programs and services in all schools in the Northwest Territories where presently we don’t have them. I think it’s important that we, as government, realize that we still have communities in the Northwest Territories which have not implemented the policy of K to 12 in all communities. One of the reasons is because we do not have the capacity in the
community and we don’t have the infrastructure in the community to provide those programs or education curriculum in all communities.
So, again, I’d just like to get some assurance that there is no movement on behalf of this government to back away from the policy and guidelines that basically the Minister referenced.