R.J. Simpson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As part of the facilities master planning, students were engaged, staff were engaged, Indigenous governments were engaged, the city was engaged, and now we are in the public portion that is being run by the city. It's a city process. There will be plenty of opportunity for public input in this zoning process. And the types of things that the Member is talking about right now traffic access. Those are exactly the types of things that this established public process is going to consider. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I understand the Member's frustration. Sometimes the rumour mill gets ahead of government and before there are decisions made, before all of the steps are followed, that information can be shared. Information gets leaked and so that was the situation. It came as a surprise to a number of people and so it wasn't by design that things were out there in the public before the MLAs were informed.

Really, the team looked at everywhere in Yellowknife. There were some requirements that, you know, were needed. So the space needed to be large enough for future expansion. There...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A similar meeting isn't necessary because it's not a similar situation in Fort Smith. That being said, I was on the phone with the mayor of Fort Smith and a number of councillors on Friday discussing this very issue. I wanted to give them assurances that this was not a situation that, you know, some people are now assuming that it is, that there is going to be a single campus in Yellowknife or Yellowknife is absorbing all of the campuses or anything like that. I wanted to let them know that this was part of the ongoing process of developing a facilities master plan that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since the time that our Premier was the Minister of Education, the messaging has been that the idea of a main campus is outdated. We have three campuses, and we have a number of community learning centres that all form one organization.

That being said, there is no plan to move the administrative headquarters from Fort Smith to Yellowknife. I think that some people perhaps, you know, saw that there was something happening with the campus in Yellowknife and assumed that everything was getting sucked into the capital. That is not the case. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What the Member is talking about is a Supreme Court case. There's a recent ruling that changed the rules on defence and the types of defence that can be put forward. That doesn't really change the situation in the Northwest Territories however. The issues that we're facing are the issues that we're facing. This is a defence that would, you know, rarely be used. I don't know if it's ever been used in the Northwest Territories. But it doesn't change the fact that we face the levels of sexual violence that the Member has already stated. So the work that the department does...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So the department has considered mandatory arbitration within the bill but is not contemplating this further based on the feedback that we received from the public. However, nothing in the bill will interfere with or prohibit the application of the Arbitration Act. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't have that level of detail. But I can get back to the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That's the plan.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If the Member's asking me for my opinion, I don't want to give my opinion about situations like this. I'm not a police officer. I don't know the ins and outs of the situation in Fort Smith. But the RCMP are aware of their staffing numbers. This is not the first time that they haven't had a full complement of officers in a community. And as the Member stated, they have sent someone in to that community. They have the ability to send in additional officers to that community if they feel that they need to. So I would say that the RCMP has this situation in hand, and if...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. These are very complex questions with many aspects to them. I will do my best to try and remember everything that the Member asked and provide some answers.

So as the Members know, we have the Early Childhood Infrastructure Fund, and that is being prioritized for communities where there are no childcare programs. There's currently 12 communities with no childcare programs, and that $1 million is available on application to communities to help them build that type of infrastructure.

We also have existing programming to help retrofit or make spaces more appropriate for...