Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have talked about this subject for many, many years and I know my colleagues have strongly talked about this subject at length as well. The Aurora College, in the downtown of Yellowknife, needs to be established in a mechanism that helps foster growth and further programming for all students of the Northwest Territories. It is constantly under siege when it comes to residence problems, which is they don’t have enough residence, even their parking. There is just nowhere for it to grow and go.
I hear constantly from the students, the staff and even some board members about how they see a future with Aurora College in the Northwest Territories, yet they just don’t see a future there. It has been stymied for many years and I had often hoped that the department would have seen the wisdom by now to start a planning study to start looking towards the future.
Again, another issue that I am not sure that it’s necessary to go on too long, but what I would say, that without supporting a planning study, we can’t predict the future. The one organization I think we should take a quick look at this one is in talking with the major, Mayor Heyck, of the City of Yellowknife. The City of Yellowknife wants to be an active supporter in some type of partnership in order to help see this come out with a future of where the college can go. They believe they could provide some type of support. What type of support that would be I am not sure, but this motion leans toward let’s get this discussion out there, let’s plan for the future. It doesn’t not commit long-term capital dollars, but what it does is help describe the type of programming we need out there. That’s why it’s so important to get behind this motion so that the work gets started. Some may argue that it is not necessary at this time, and I think we have many students that we’re failing by not providing the opportunity to continue programming or expand programming.
The last thing I will say is that Aurora College has long talked about wanting to develop university-style programming, and I have supported the past-presidents who have carried that message forward and they said, if they could lean toward a bigger type of programming mandate, they could bring new money into the Northwest Territories. I have often heard about southern institutions wanting to come to the Territories to partner and they actually bring funding models and cash to the Territories to study things like Aboriginal language and culture, but that money and research travels south when they leave and we can’t let that continue to happen.
Aurora College does not have a reputation of attracting many people from outside of the territory and I think that if we started planning appropriately, maybe we can become a college that starts to do that. Maybe we can evolve into a university-style campus and into a university maybe someday, but it all starts with that first ring of the bell of enthusiasm and a planning study would be something to that effect.
Aurora College’s future will continue at its present pace. The students that attend there are very proud. The professors and leadership there and administration and board are very proud of the programming it offers, but united they all say the same thing, which is that much more could be done. Today this motion says let’s take a look at what type of future can happen there. Thank you.