Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to reiterate some of the comments that I made in some of my general comments to the budget as a whole. Like Mr. Bromley, I’m extremely
disappointed in the amount of money that we are putting into education in this capital budget.
I want to focus a bit on some of the projects that are not there. I mentioned those in my general comments to the budget as well. In June of this year, committee received a document which outlined the 20-year needs assessment from the Department of ECE. I appreciate that that document hadn’t gone to FMB and the capital budget had not yet been determined, but in looking at that document and looking at only large capital, because there is small capital and large capital and I’m looking at large capital, so school renovations and new schools, additions and so on, there were five schools in the document that committee received in June: Sissons, Lutselk’e, William McDonald, Mangilaluk School and Chief Jimmy Bruneau. They were all on that list as being a priority of the department for renovation, addition, replacement, whatever, but they were a large capital project. So you take that list and you compare it to the list that we are looking at here in this budget for Education. There are no large capital projects for schools in this budget. There is one large capital project and it is a software project. It is a CMAS replacement or upgrade, whatever it is.
I have great difficulty understanding how we can have such a variation in documents. From June to October, in five months’ time, we have lost five major capital projects for schools. If these are important and priority projects for Education, Culture and Employment, then there is something wrong with the way the department is asking for these things to be dealt with. It’s a priority in June and they are nowhere on the list in October.
The one school that is in both places – and that is the Colville Lake School addition – in June it was going to be an addition. There was construction money in the budget. In this particular budget there is money for a planning study and then there is no construction money, so we are going to plan for the addition or replacement of Colville Lake School, and we will do the planning, but in 2015-16 there is no money in the budget, that I can see, where we are going to start construction.
I’m really concerned that what Education wants to do and what gets into the budget just do not jibe, from what I can tell. I am concerned that schools across the territory are missing out. We have projects that are on the list now that weren’t on the list in June. We have all these projects that were on the list in June that are not anywhere on the list now and I fail to understand why.
Sissons School, for instance, in June it was down for a renovation and addition starting in 2014-15. You look at this budget that is before us, you don’t see the words Sissons School anywhere in the education and culture activity in the Education
budget. So in five months’ time, Sissons has disappeared off the map. Even if Sissons was on here and was planned for two or three years down the road, that would be helpful, but it’s not anywhere that we can see.
That is what I wanted to focus on. If the Minister can enlighten me as to how things can change so much in five months’ time, I am all ears. Thank you.