Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a comment and a couple of questions here.
I want to follow up to discuss the project for the Children First Society, the early childhood care and education facility in Inuvik. Like other Members, I fully support this project, it’s needed, and I give full credit to the members of the Children First Society, who did a great job of raising funds and have done an excellent job to get themselves the facility that they know they need.
My concern with this particular project is the process that was used to get it to the capital budget. We have apparently, according to the Finance Minister, have and have had a red-flag list, and I think the Finance Minister said earlier last week that the red-flag list is projects that are next in line. So one therefore assumes that projects will be on the red-flag list, then, as capital budgets go by, they will move from the red-flag list into the capital budget. This item was not anywhere near the red-flag list. This item wasn’t on anybody’s capital list until about a year ago. Probably not even that long ago.
In my mind, the problem is that we are funding a facility which the GNWT will not own. I appreciate that it is an NGO. I appreciate that they’ve done good work. But we are, as the Minister has said, setting a precedent.
I don’t think it was well thought out what precedent we were setting. I don’t think it was well thought out the implications that it would have for every other NGO in the NWT who is struggling for funds and would love to have a million dollars of infrastructure funding. The project itself is great, but the way that we got it to this capital budget, in my mind, was not the right way to do it and I don’t think it was well thought out.
We do need a policy, and the Minister has said he’s looking at a policy just for his department, and I want the Minister and all of the Cabinet to know that the policy that we need is not one just for Education. We need a policy that will cover every department, every NGO in the territory, so that we have a policy that when an NGO asks for infrastructure funding, no matter from what corner of the NWT they come, or what corner of the budget they’re coming from, that we have a policy that we can lean on and that will guide us in making a decision to fund them or not to fund them. The policy should not refer just to either Education or to early childhood development. It needs to be one that applies across the board of the whole of government.
That said, I’ll just leave that at that. The Minister has spoken to this project already. I don’t really need a response. I guess I do need a response. I would like a confirmation, and if the Minister can’t give it, then I think Members on this side of the House would like it from the Premier or Cabinet that the policy that is going to be developed will be one that applies across government and not just to the Department of Education.
The other thing that I wanted to mention, there are a couple of things that are not in the budget. I mentioned these in my opening remarks but I do need to mention them here again. There are several educational facilities which, again, are not on the budget. Sissons School is one. It’s well past its time for renovation and it was on the capital budget a number of years ago. It is no longer anywhere to be seen on the capital budget. I think that’s wrong. I’ve been advised that it’s in the works. I can’t see it on a piece of paper, so that concerns me.
Mildred Hall School is another one which has had renovations a number of years ago but there’s a certain portion of those renovations which were not completed, and again, there’s no money in any budget that I can see now or in the future that will allow for Mildred Hall to finish those renovations, the ones that weren’t done.
Thirdly, and again this has been mentioned a number of times, but there is no indication in the budget for any funding anywhere that I can see in the future for a stand-alone campus for Aurora College in Yellowknife. I know the Minister has responded and said, you know, it’s being worked on
and so on, but it needs to be into the capital budget. As I said, I don’t see it anywhere and that really concerns me.
In terms of these three facilities, I guess my question to the Minister is: Why are they not in the budget? If not for the 2013-2014 capital year, why are they not in future years? Why do we not have an indication that they are on the radar soon and that these three facilities are going to be getting the money that they need to start their planning to do their renovations or to do their building within the next couple of years?