R.J. Simpson

Thank you, Madam Chair. Right now, what's going on with the school is that all of the materials in the school have been removed in preparation for demolition. There is a contract in place for abatement and demolition, and there is a tender out for construction at this time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When students at Aurora College left for March break, they were unaware of the uncertainty that the pandemic would bring to so many aspects of their lives, including if they would remain on track to achieving their education and career goals. I would like to share with you today some of the challenges and innovative solutions that the team at Aurora College implemented to support their students and their communities.

When the pandemic hit the Northwest Territories, all Aurora College programming was temporarily suspended while the college team planned and executed a...

Thank you. We are looking for additional funds. If we don't get those funds, we still have a school to build. We have to retender it, or I have to go to FMB to get some money. Those are decisions that I am going to make as soon as we find out if we can get some extra funds. Hopefully, that is within the coming weeks, but I can't say for sure. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. No, there is no target date, and that's because we've been approached by the community to try and partner on the school and perhaps do things a little bit differently and, given the mandate of this Assembly that we want to do this differently, we're exploring that option. So it's not a straight-ahead GNWT build. We're trying to work with the Indigenous government and find a way forward. There's not much more I can say at this point, because that's really where we are, is really in the early stages, but this school is a priority. I heard about it during the entire last Assembly, and...

Thank you, Madam Chair. In Yellowknife, sometimes there are some schools that are owned by the education authority, and there are some schools that are owned by ECE. ECE covers the cost when it's an ECE asset, and the authority covers the cost when it's an authority asset. However, there are times when ECE might have, I won't say money lying around, but does have some funds that they could put towards these to assist the education bodies, and so, when that's the case, then we do our best to help them so that they can use their surplus on education. So I guess the answer is it depends. Thank...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't even know how long ago it was now; the days have all melded together. The Chief Public Health Officer, when she issued Emerging Wisely, she also issued a backgrounder document pertaining specifically to schools and the measures that needed to be taken in schools. Since that time, the department has been working with the education bodies to come up with plans on how they are going to implement those recommendations in schools to ensure that staff and students and the public remain safe in the upcoming school year.

There are 49 schools, which means there needs to...

Thank you. The project is on schedule. There is no delay. The carry-over is the difference between the cash flow forecast produced in 2017 and the actual expenditures incurred during 2019-2020. When you start a project, you estimate what the costs are going to be, and sometimes you don't get it 100 percent right. The project is currently at the end of the design development phase. The 100 percent construction documents were finalized at the beginning of May 2020, at which time the design consultant started the construction tender package. The draft package is completed, and the tender is out...

Sorry, could the Member please repeat the question?

I'm not a statistician, but I'd think there would be a lot of effort expended to do that that would be better spent teaching languages. The Member wants to know every time someone becomes fluent. Well, hopefully, we're not going to be able to track that because it's going to be so many people. You go around to different communities, and they're doing different things. In certain places, they have early childhood where it's immersion. I don't think we're giving those children tests on a regular basis to determine, "Are you fluent, or are you not fluent?" It's not a simple black-and-white thing...

The Bureau of Statistics has information about the number of speakers. We don't have the information about which speakers have passed versus who has just recently acquired a language, but as I mentioned, work is under way to get better data, and hopefully, the Member will be pleased with what the future holds in terms of that.