Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have tried to explain many times the change to the formula. Obviously I have not been succinct enough. I will try again today. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important for all Members to understand that boards or Divisional Education Councils are block funded by this government. The councils are one of the early examples this government has of success in community empowerment at the regional level. The department does use a formula to allocate funds to councils to ensure equity. After that allocation is decided by the department, the councils do not have to follow the allocation as it is set up. Councils are free to allocate funds in a manner they see as best filling the needs of the population they serve. For instance, Mr. Speaker, that means that a council could choose to decrease the support to bussing while increasing the pupil/teacher ratio. Or they could choose to decrease support to fine arts or to special needs students. It is totally at the council's discretion how they spend the money that we provide them, as long as they are following the guidelines and policies of the government. It became obvious in about 1989, there needed to be some examination of criteria for allocating funds to councils, and in 1996, after a considerable amount of discussion, there was a rebasing of the formula.

All of the directors from all of the councils were involved in discussions and, after changing the formulas around, the resulting amount of money that would have been going to the South Slave Divisional Education Council would have actually increased from the previous year. They would have had a net benefit in total dollars going to them over the previous year. But because of our deficit elimination strategy, all of the councils got cut by the same percentage to achieve the deficit elimination targets that were set by this Legislature. The resulting decrease in funds should not be highlighted as being allocated particularly to bussing. The decrease in funds to all of the councils was tied to the budget of this territory. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.