Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like my colleague, last night I attended a meeting on the Hay River school swap. I’d like to thank the DEA for hosting this meeting; it has been a meeting long time coming. The community was glad to hear all the information.
I can probably sum up the message that should be sent to the Department of Education and maybe my colleagues across the way. From Facebook, a comment from one of my constituents: “It’s a bad idea, just a quick fix, but it puts more students out without a gym. They should just pony up the dough and build a French school gym.”
The whole concept of the meeting was to discuss the percentages; if they made the swap; do they swap; if the DEA takes over Ecole Boreale will they put their JK to three there; will they put six and seven there; some of the occupancy levels of when the French school takes over, if the French school takes over Harry Camsell, what the percentages would be, so it was very informative. But I think the message was clear that the community would like to see other options and other considerations being done.
Obviously, Hay River wasn’t just there to complain, they rallied together and said, as a community we can do this, we can find the solution here. They talked about doing fundraising; they talked about – you know, we put a bid together for Arctic Winter Games – if we received that money and we won the bid, maybe some of those funds could be used there to have a gymnasium for the Arctic Winter Games, also any other ideas, such as federal funding.
We would like Cabinet to reconsider their process of what they’re doing with the French school gym and reconsider what they’re doing to the community of Hay River. They’re dividing up the two organizations, two great organizations in Hay River. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.