Thank you very much, Premier -- sorry, thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to start off by pointing out a couple things that I heard from across the floor.

So this motion deletes $5,250,000 from the main estimates for ECE. It does not speak to Aurora College. It does not speak to deferral. It simply deletes the money. This is not a place this on hold. It's not deferring education, culture and employment's budget until after the briefing with Aurora College next week. It is a deletion.

The other comment in regards to reading about it on Cabin Radio, all of us did receive a public service announcement in the morning before this appeared on Cabin Radio. So I think that that is important to note there.

I do have a very -- let me back up a second. I want to first acknowledge that absolutely this was a shock to Members of this House. It was a shock to the constituents that they served. And I think it's important to recognize that. I think it's important to also recognize that would we have liked to have had a more strategic rollout of this announcement where people are made aware of what the forward working plans of Aurora College are as far as adult education especially in our small communities is, hundred percent. I absolutely agree with Members that they would have liked to have known right up front what the plan is. That meeting is booked with Aurora College for next week where next week Aurora College will come and sit in front of Members and explain to them what their plan is. Aurora College never said we don't want to be a part of this, we're walking away, we're going to have nothing to do with it. And I know there was some comments to that effect on the other side of the House. Aurora College said, how we're doing this isn't working. It isn't serving Northerners to the best of our ability, and we want to rethink that. So they are asking to come forward with a new plan and do it better.

I do appreciate, though, that it is hard to wait that time and this period of limbo to work on that. I think there's a couple of very important pieces that Members do really need to know.

If this money is gone, there is no ability for ECE or Aurora College to do the plans that they are putting together as far as shifting from what is happening right now.

In addition to that, I also think it's worthwhile noting that the money for CLCs is also there to ensure that any impacted employees in small communities are paid during the layoff notice period. That is incredibly important to the people of small communities in this House.

In addition, if Aurora College is, first of all, going to execute their plan in short order, they're going to need funding to do that. They're not planning to do nothing. They're not planning to not use the funding. The job that I have right now is determining if there are gaps left over within access to education within -- or adult education in small communities. And so if there's a gap that I then need to fill within the department, I won't have the funding to do that either.

I also think it's imperative that I point out that the amount indicated within this motion is about double the amount of the MOU, the memorandum of understanding, for adult learning and basic education between the Department of Education, Culture and Employment and Aurora College. So this even goes beyond that. So this motion is going to absolutely have a negative impact on adult learning in small communities and more so than I think the Member even intends.

I think it's clear that I don't support the motion. I hope that Members come to the briefing next week. I believe it's the -- I get off a plane and go pretty much straight to it, which I think -- I'm happy to, I think it's a very important briefing. I very much look forward to sitting with Members and having very important conversation. I think it's incredibly important. There is absolutely no part of me that feels that we don't need to be doing more for adult education, especially in small communities. But by taking money away from small communities, we're not going to get there. Thank you, Madam Chair.