Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the time and certainly the clock of the day is running out, I’m going to be really brief and then I’ll report progress from thereon in.

The issue I wanted to highlight and say is that I’m very excited to see that the two schools have made the capital plan this year, and I think that couldn’t have been done without the great work of all Members on this particular side of the House. I know that each Member was very gracious on supporting that these two plans, one for Mildred Hall and one for Sissons, got on the books. I know it was raised by many of my colleagues over the years and it has taken its time, but it’s one of those challenges, getting your project on the books. I know it doesn’t mean immediately that there will be a new school built or a new renovation. You have to start with a plan. I have even talked to the school board about it. In order to be able to know what we’re dealing with, we have to start with a plan. That’s the way you do business.

I just want to stress how grateful I am to the government for supporting these two initiatives. I am sincerely grateful for the extra push I got from all the Yellowknife colleagues and certainly community colleagues as we all collectively got behind these initiatives. I would be remiss to say that the Sir John project of fixing the sewer line is obviously key. They’ve had troubles for a number of years on that piece of infrastructure and I’m glad ECE is there. I certainly look forward to the good work they’ll do going forward on these two initiatives and we’ll see where it takes us. When the timing is appropriate, we will address the challenges at Mildred Hall and Sissons. Like I said earlier, w

e need a plan and that’s what this is going

to do. I can assure you the two schools are very excited to know that their schools haven’t been forgotten.

The last point I wanted to say is one of the challenges we’ve always had with schools is you have to hit the magic number. My argument is I don’t necessarily think that shouldn’t apply, but it

shouldn’t apply in every circumstance. What happens here is if your school is 10 students short of meeting that next level of getting your renovation, what we do at the same time is ignore the asset as a whole. One of the initiatives we worry about with capital investment is saying we have to protect the asset. Obviously, we protect people and resources and the asset. By letting schools get old, deteriorated and say if you only need 10 more students we would do a renovation, we have to stress about the other opportunities there within, which is to say the asset always has to be well maintained and safe. I’m not talking about safety when it comes to dangers, but I am saying safe in the context of how it’s used.

I just want to say thank you to the department for helping us as well. Again, Members came when this problem needed to be faced and they got behind it. So, thank you to everyone.

I just wanted to provide some comments. At this time I move that we report progress.

---Carried