What the Premier said was that I consulted with the Chief Public Health Officer and received advice to close NWT schools until after Easter. That is advice. I don't have the authority to close those schools.
I have a meeting today with the chairs of the DEAs and the DECs, and they are the ones with that authority. Our recommendation will be to follow the advice of the chief medical officer, which is to close schools until after Easter. What that means, we are not sure yet. We will see where we are at that point and then re-evaluate, but there are a number of options on what can happen.
In the South Slave, they haven't had spring break yet. Perhaps they just don't have a spring break and they finish early. There are things like what happened in Alberta, where they cancelled school until basically next September, so it is still too early to know what is going on, but I can tell the Members of this House that it is my desire to continue educating children even in light of the physical closures of schools. I don't want to just abandon this school year. I want to ensure that our grads, people who can graduate, are able to graduate, and I want to ensure that we don't allow our students to fall further behind by just giving up on their education for the rest of this year.
What that looks like, I am not sure. The staff in the department have been working with the NWT Teachers' Association, have been working with the superintendents and the school boards to try and figure out how we can continue delivering education in light of these closures. That is where we are right now, and this recommendation came in a few hours ago, so the plans are still in the process of being made. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.