I would like to, if I could, Mr. Chairman, make some comments on the leadership program. As I understand it, the program has essentially been grandfathered so there are no new entries into the program at this point in time, but the program is carrying on, right? Okay, so we are talking about that program in Fort Smith.
If I could, just to put it into my own context, I remember I was on the Cabinet when the former Minister brought it forward, and many of us supported it. Again, I have some very strong feelings about education and I have expressed them in this House a number of times. There is no single solution to education in the Northwest Territories. There have to be a number of innovative approaches. The support for this particular program was pretty strong in the last Assembly, and I think there is still a fair amount of support for it.
It was put forward as an innovative program that tried to build on the strengths of the old residential schools but put into a more modern context. Now, I haven't seen a copy of the study, which I really look forward to seeing, but every indication to me is that there has been success with the program, but in fairness to the former Minister, he never pretended that the way it was originally developed was the way it had to end up. He said, this is an experiment, and, if it works, let's build on it.
So, I think what the Members are saying is that if there are ways to improve it, I am sure the former Minister would be the first one to agree that this is the way to go. But, I guess a lot of us see this as one element in the big picture of education that really should be considered. As the Minister said, in fact, if there is a high level of success here, perhaps components of this approach should be used somewhere else.
I join the other Members in saying that before any definitive decision is made to end this program, let's have a real good look at the results of the study and let's look at it in the context of how we can improve it as opposed to just having the option of doing away with it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.