Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I too would like to recognize Lyda Fuller as executive director of the Yellowknife YWCA, and she's also a constituent in Frame Lake. I want to thank her and her colleagues for the great work that they do. I'd also like to welcome Mr. Elias Abboud, who works for CBC Montreal. I had the pleasure of playing hockey with him when he was in Yellowknife previously, and I look forward to the opportunity to do the same this week.

[Translation] Ecole Allain St-Cyr is located in the Frame Lake riding. It started in 1989, in a portable near J.H. Sissons School, as the first francophone school in the NWT under constitutionally protected language rights. Following a court challenge by francophone parents, a separate school was opened in 1999 that soon included high school. Ecole Allain St-Cyr was expanded in 2008 following another court challenge. A further court challenge has resulted in a decision requiring the GNWT to add a gymnasium and access to the small spaces for specialized activities. This has been a long and tragically, an often bitter struggle for francophone families and their children. I can speak from personal experience as our two children went through Ecole Allain St-Cyr, up to the end of high school. They saw their classes dwindle to two students in grade 12 as their friends left for other Yellowknife schools with better facilities. We have to put the interests of the students first to ensure there are more equitable school programs and facilities for all our Yellowknife students. Parents and students are losing patience and are leaving the Ecole Allain St-Cyr due to this unfair treatment compared to other students in Yellowknife. New parents moving to Yellowknife consider Ecole Allain St-Cyr incomplete, and register their children elsewhere. Space-sharing agreements with other schools have not worked. I would like to have additional time to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted.

[Translation] Transportation by buses or by taxis to have access to other areas is a waste of time which could be better spent in the classroom. Three classrooms are currently used at William McDonald School, but students don't want to go into that school as the culture and climate is very, very different. School enrolment at the primary level continues to grow, but the school is losing students in its high school program, which is in crisis. In 2015-16, nine of 42 students left for other Yellowknife high schools. This is a vicious circle. At Ecole Allain St-Cyr students are leaving because of a perceived lack of facilities and programs, which leads to the school not being able to offer programs and courses because of a lack of students.

I commend the Minister of Education, Culture and Education for his commitment to work cooperatively on the issue of the Ministerial directive that currently restricts enrolment in NWT francophone schools. I understand that the Minister is prepared to work collaboratively with the francophone school board of the NWT and parents in Yellowknife to resolve the current issues at Ecole Allain St-Cyr. I will have questions about this for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment later today.

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I promise I won't speak for 10 minutes, which is my usual habit. This was a difficult process for us all to go through and a learning experience for us all. I do appreciate all of the work that our staff put into this document, and Cabinet put into this as well. I was probably negligent in my opening remarks not recognizing the work that Cabinet and their staff have put it into this document. I do appreciate the work that we've all put it into this. Earlier in my remarks in consideration of this document I said that I couldn't support it as it had been brought forward. I'm pleased to say that with the changes that we have agreed upon here in the last couple of days I am prepared to support this document and I look forward to working with our Cabinet colleagues to make sure that we can live up to these expectations that were laid out in a number of our campaigns and by our constituents. Thank you very much to everybody for their perseverance on this and I look forward to working with Cabinet to get this carried out now. Thanks.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. First off, I'd like to thank the mover of the motion for a very eloquent and detailed rationale that sets out the importance of supporting universal daycare in our communities. I don't really want to repeat any of her arguments. I think she made them very well. What I want to do though, Mr. Chair, is focus back on the priorities that we identified as the 18th Assembly earlier on in our lives here. Back in December, the priority reads under “Cost of Living” number 6: “Implementing universal and affordable childcare.” That's what we committed to do together before people assumed their Cabinet hats and folks on this side. That's what we committed to do. What came back from Cabinet is “We will develop options.” That's helpful. I think what this motion, though, is really about is to try to strengthen that commitment and make it a measurable action. What we suggest is that there should be an action plan within two years, that's the difference. We've put a timeframe on it. It's not just about developing options, we want an action plan.

How we actually implement it, that's something we can debate and discuss in terms of the budget and when we see the action plan, but a vague commitment to develop options I just don't think reflects the priorities that we developed together for this Assembly back in December. I'm also very persuaded by the comments of the previous speaker about the importance of this for small communities and investing in our people. That's what this is really about, and making sure that we move that forward as a clear priority for the 18th Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to be voting in favour of this motion for a number of reasons. Recently, Yellowknife MLAs did meet with the mayor and city council here in Yellowknife to talk about some issues of importance for them. The mayor has been on the public record as supporting changes to the Cities, Towns and Villages Act to enable the City of Yellowknife to use local improvement charges as one way to set up a revolving fund that would allow residents to access the capital costs of energy efficiency without having to put all the money themselves up-front. They can start to pay for the costs of the capital improvements on their homes through the energy savings that they would get right away. What this motion is doing is putting in our mandate that we enable local governments to do this. It doesn't say they have to do it, but it starts to establish this as a higher priority for us as government to enable our communities to put in place revolving funds that will allow residents to immediately start to save money and also save on greenhouse gas emissions. I do hope that our Members on the other side of the House are going to be supporting this. This is not a major change to the Cities, Towns and Villages Act, it doesn't force anybody to do it, but we have to give our communities the authority to be able to set up a revolving fund and local improvement charges to carry out this important work. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

A couple of things here. I'm hoping that even with the changes that have been proposed, our colleagues on the other side will still vote in favour of this. I'd be curious to see what happens, but Mr. Chair, I'd also request a recorded vote on this motion.

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I do appreciate the Member opposite providing a good summary of the good work that Arctic Energy Alliance does carry out. I think part of the difficulty here with this proposed amendment to the motion is that it would basically take away one of the measurable targets or actions for this particular item in the mandate, and that's to expand programs. We haven't said over what period of time or even how much, but it's an inspirational part of this action in here to basically expand those programs.

We can debate and discuss how much and so on when it comes to the actual budget, but to remove that wording now in the context of this I don't think that's a wise thing to do. That sort of qualifier hasn't been added into a lot of other places in the mandate where the Cabinet did see fit to make commitments to do things that actually might cost money as well, so it's kind of curious that you want to take it out of this one, but there's other areas in the mandate document that might cost some money but you're prepared to stand by those. In any event, we've had a bigger debate and discussion around the fiscal context yesterday and I don't think this is a wise thing to remove this one word. It does create a measurable action and a target that we should all be striving towards, so I'll be voting against this. Mr. Chair, I actually would request a recorded vote. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. For those that are listening, or are going to read this in the Hansard, the difference here is we’re changing the wording that was in the tabled document from “provide incentives” to “we will expand and improve access to incentives.” That’s the key difference here. Just a little bit of an explanation. The original wording says, “provide incentives.” We already do that through the Arctic Energy Alliance, so I don’t think this really represents any kind of innovation or change in any way, and I think what I heard, certainly, during the campaign and from a number of constituents is that we should be looking to improve access to incentives to make them more widely available, particularly to lower-income families, but also perhaps, other communities as well, and that we shouldn’t just improve access, but we should actually expand incentives. I’m sure we’ll have an interesting discussion around what that means as well, but the idea here is that energy efficiency is one of the main ways that we can actually reduce the cost of living for our residents. We should always be doing our best to improve energy efficiency. Arctic Energy Alliance does offer some amazing programs and I think the objective of this change is to ensure that we can do a better job with our residents to lower the cost of living through energy efficiency. Thank you, Mr. Chai

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I

move that Tabled Document 1-18(2), the Proposed Mandate of The Government of the Northwest Territories, 2016-2019, be amended on page 21 by deleting the words “We will provide incentives for residents to invest in energy efficient products, help businesses, condominiums and co-operatives make investments in energy conservation and energy efficiency, support residents and communities so they can make investments into renewable energies such as solar, and improve the energy efficiency of public housing,” and inserting the words “We will expand and improve access to incentives for residents to invest in energy-efficient products; help businesses, condominiums and co-operatives invest in energy conservation and efficiency; support residential and community investment in renewable energy such as solar; and improve the efficiency of public housing.”