Bob Bromley

Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to follow up on my first line of questioning, for which I benefited from the questions and responses from my colleagues and the Ministers involved. Given the expected completion date of the education plan — two weeks from today, as we have heard twice from the Minister of Education — and given that Public Works and Services is ready to start their planning right away, as we’ve heard from Mr. Aumond, and assuming that there will be some obvious renos that could be done that are either not affected or minimally affected by the education plan, can we at least assume...

Thank you for the reminder of that earlier discussion. My impression is that the renovation would go on over the course of several years, perhaps three or more, and that they would be a fairly large suite of things given the state of the school, some of which would involve, you know, a thorough marriage between the physical maintenance of the building or renovation and the education plan but some of which surely would not. So I would like to ask a little more specifically: are there some significant renovations outside of that which would require an education plan that could be done and for...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to go back to the school in Hay River, Diamond Jenness school, which has had its major work postponed by two years. I understand there is some deferred maintenance work to be aimed at this school in the interim. I am also aware that there was a considerable amount of work done to assess the situation with the school starting at least in 2003 with reports in 2006 and later. Originally the substantial amount of work was to be scheduled for 2009–2010. That was what we’d sort of agreed on last year. I’m wondering what work is being planned for making sure that...

Thanks.

I am just looking at some numbers, which I’m not going to cite, that were provided, I believe, by the Ministers involved here and that indicate substantive work is not really scheduled to start until ’11–12. Perhaps I could say: can we expect that given the conditions that I’ve stated, the degree of work scheduled for ’11–12 could actually be done in 2010–2011?

Something seems inconsistent here, given that we had planned quite a number of millions of dollars for this ’09–10 as short a time as less than a year ago. I’m detecting some inconsistencies there. I don’t have any specific further questions. I appreciate those comments.

Thank you for those comments. Given that major work was scheduled for this coming fiscal year, as short a time ago was this year or less than a year ago, I assume that considerable planning has been done for that work. Given that, should money be available for ’09–10, I’m assuming that a substantive amount of money could be productively spent in ’09–10 on that school. Is that correct?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to follow up on a couple of things. First of all, Mr. Aumond, in responding to Mrs. Groenewegen, referred to a clause in the contract that was attached to the letter of award that states that the funds and go-aheads were pending approval or appropriation of funds by the House. I don’t recall seeing a reference to that, actually, or the attachment to that letter of award. Was that a draft contract that was attached, or was something specific there that we could see?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In its recent insightful submission on revenue options to the government, the non-government organization Alternatives North notes that the revenue options discussion paper does not mention the role that services and programs can play in attracting and holding people in our communities.

Coincidentally, this agrees strongly with the tone of the message I received at my Weledeh constituency meeting last week. This message was that while many people are noticing the rising cost of living, they also are still appreciating the incredible characteristics of our jurisdiction...

I certainly agree with the Minister on this. For clarity, perhaps I could say a hypothetical situation, where we have a Minister of Finance who is also a direct beneficiary, potentially, who could benefit from a project being awarded or negotiated with a company….

Interjection.