Thank you, Mr. Chair. A few areas of, I guess, concern. When we were talking about education with their very big department O and M, but obviously we’re making some changes within this department to give the best opportunity for our youth and our adults, depending on whatever level of education or degree where they are in their lives, what concerns me is just the amounts that have been allocated in this capital budget for Education, Culture and Employment. That’s 2.36 percent of the capital budget focused in this department when it’s such a big area of concern for obviously the small communities especially, and yet we’re not addressing some of those concerns.

When you look at some of the statistics, attendance is probably our biggest challenge to get kids into the seats in the schools, but if we have schools that aren’t even there, or even schools that are not adequate enough to house X number of students, then there’s possibly a reason why our attendance is so bad. That leads to a lot of other social determinants that affect a person’s life starting at a very young age. As I said, in the small communities we see that is pretty evident and you heard it here today.

Another thing that we’re doing this year in 23 of the schools, I believe, is the Junior Kindergarten, and I think in this capital budget we’re looking at making some renovations to some of the schools to address the needs that are going to be associated with bringing the four-year-olds into the school system. I think that as we learn what this Junior Kindergarten is doing, we’re going to see that we’re going to need to do more renovations moving forward, and once again the system, whether it’s a washroom or whether it’s creating new areas to do play-based activities, then those are costs that we’re going to see and they’re going to add stress to the educator, it will add stress to the school, and whether we’re prepared for that or not, I see that it is addressed in the capital budget, but it’s not addressed for all the schools. We’re going to see some challenges, and how are we going to address those moving forward? I know there have been talks about a lot of reallocation within this

department and where are we going to find the dollars to address some of these potential concerns that might be coming up here.

In Inuvik we do have an issue here with the Aurora College family units and when we’re going to get those up and running again, because I know the department is spending a lot of money right now as they’re in an agreement with one of the rental companies in Inuvik. Even though those family units aren’t being fully utilized because we have a low enrollment in the college, we’re spending a lot of money, throwing a lot of dollars at vacant units right now, family units. That’s money that could go into breakfast programs; that’s money that could be going to other things.

Last year we had a motion that was brought to the House regarding a stand-alone campus for here in Yellowknife, and we did go over and met with the staff, met with the students, we did a tour of the college, and it was evident that space was an issue here in Yellowknife for a lot of the departments and a lot of the programs that were being available. We did go to one room where we saw X number of nursing students all crowded together in one room. I can’t even remember how many there were, but there was quite a bit. That just goes back to my argument that we’ve got to start utilizing whatever infrastructure we have in the other campuses where we’re putting too much stress on the building, we’re putting too much stress on the instructors, and I think that the Minister really needs to have a good talk with the Board of Governors on how we start utilizing all the space that we have in the NWT for programs within the Aurora College field.

A couple of other concerns that I had with this department was when they are doing planning studies, you mentioned you’re doing some planning studies here, Inuvik was, you know, a lot of work went into that school. There was an issue around the dental office. It’s supposed to be something that’s supposed to be great for the kids and we’re not even using it. I think the planning study didn’t take that into consideration, and if you walk out of the school into the school grounds and you’re promoting play-based learning with Junior Kindergarten and you walk into the playgrounds and there’s no playground. There’s a lot of grass, a lot of hills, logs, I think that’s what it is. Our playground in Inuvik is logs. It’s ridiculous. When we do these planning studies, we’ve got to look at things that are going to help our students learn cognitively and be able to use their minds and not crawl around and jump over logs and rocks. It’s something that was overlooked; it was an oversight. I’m not too sure what happened there, but I think that needs to be addressed not only at East Three elementary but also with schools as we’re looking at developing them.

As we’re going through ECE, I didn’t see much here for the culture component. As the Minister knows, our languages are a dying breed right now, especially in some of the regions they’re getting worse, but we’re not seeing anything in terms of culture, tradition, developing space so that we can highlight some of the history. Not only that, maybe adding to the museums that we have, looking at ways we can be innovative in getting our culture revitalized that will help promote our languages as well.

So, just a few things of concern there within this department. It’s such a big department that has a lot of responsibility and the education and the wellness and livelihood of our people of the Northwest Territories, and we’re only investing 2.36 percent of this capital budget into seeing what we can do for our residents.

So, obviously some concerns, but on a plus side I guess it’s nice to see that we’re taking alternative energy options for some of the schools with the pellet boilers and those kind of things, but still a lot of concern, and I think for me a lot of them need to be addressed in years to come.

So, just a few comments, some concerns. In terms of the playground at East Three elementary, I know there was a lot of parents that are pretty, I wouldn’t even say concerned, I guess shake their heads and don’t understand how we cannot put a playground in front of the school when we have all these elementary schools out there. They can only play tag and hide and seek. You can’t even go hiding in that thing, so you can’t even play hide and seek. So I think that’s something that needs to be addressed with the playground at the East Three elementary.

So, a few concerns there, Mr. Chair. Thank you.