Mr. Speaker, I have a further reply if I may continue. A return to an oral question also asked by Mr. Dent on February 27th regarding the provision of speech therapy to students. Mr. Speaker, Stanton Hospital has two speech pathologists providing services to Yellowknife catchment area, the Kitikmeot and the Inuvik regions. Because of this huge workload, Stanton has had no choice but to limit services in Yellowknife to preschool children. This situation is not workable in the long term and the hospital board has been looking for ways to increase the staffing. It has been possible, Mr. Speaker, through a combination of increased efficiencies and the repatriation of services currently provided in the south, to identify additional resources to resolve this problem. As a result, the hospital will add three speech pathologists to its organization over the next year.

These additional resources will clear up the backlog for both preschool and school-age children. Mr. Speaker, the team will also assess the continuing need for speech pathology services in cooperation with Yellowknife schools. This technical support will help the schools to develop more effective teaching strategies by differentiating between students whose speech difficulties relate to a medical problem as opposed to those who are having difficulty for other reasons, such as learning English as a second language.