Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The way the system has worked is that there has been an expectation that teachers will provide their own materials based on the curriculum. I do not think that means they have to go out and purchase their own materials. For instance, the Baffin Education Council has done a fair bit of work in putting together boxes or kits of materials to tie into different themes that they can ship from school to school available through the teaching and learning centres in the region. I think divisional education councils have a role to play, in particular, because they can help reflect the culture of that region when they are putting together these supplies for the teachers. The department does fund teaching and learning centres to assist them in that kind of work.

Thank you, Mr. Picco. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would have to agree with the Member that the challenges that we face in the north are probably unique. I would say, however, that a teacher who is teaching in Athabasca, Edmonton, Winnipeg or Montreal has the same challenge. From the curriculum they have to put together what they use in the classroom to bring the curriculum to life. That is always the challenge. The Member is also right that the teaching and learning centres have, up until now, concentrated on the K to grade 6 resource materials for teachers, but they have recognized the need to expand and are starting to develop broader resource materials for the grades 7 to 12.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly do not disagree that we would want to make sure that as many doors as possible are open to graduates in the north. I think that the Member for Thebacha made clear that I had misheard him in his concern and had suggested very much the same thing that the Member has, which I do not disagree with. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, every year education authorities, colleges and communities are asked to identify their capital needs for consideration and the department then compares those requests to other planning information that we have, such as current enrolment which would lead to current usage in the school. We would look at population projections for growth and try and map out where the needs will lie. The communities are involved because they are requested to identify what they see as their priorities. We then have to take a look at what they have identified as their priorities and see how they fit into the criteria that the department uses. That means we would have to assess whether or not the space is there now or how much of the space that is there is being used and try and project when an addition or a new school would be needed. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I take it then that the community would identify its priorities based on its growth and based on what it sees as its forecasted increase or decrease in the community. Now, you never see a decrease, but normally no one would ask to decrease. It is always an increase. Therefore, if a community foresees, for instance in division, that they are going to be the capital and they forecast a $6 or $7 million school and then they do not become the capital, that school is built without the need being there. I refer specifically to Rankin Inlet, because I got the impression that the school was built forecasting Rankin Inlet to be the capital. Now I find out that they are not the capital any more so now I see, Mr. Chairman, in the federal budget, that Iqaluit is getting a brand new school because they are the capital. Now that school was already built, in fact, in Rankin Inlet.

It seems to be that as people identify these needs, sometimes they do not happen. I bring this up in particular because I noticed in the overall capital, Mr. Chairman, that there seems to be some identified, where they do not need a school anymore. They identify a community library and it gets funded as well, but we are still not meeting the basic needs in the other communities. Before you get a library you should be able to read. It stands to reason that you would make sure that the rest of the communities have their basic needs before you go with the secondary requirements of libraries. I referred to a library this year, but I noticed it last year as well. Where my community of Tuktoyaktuk has been trying to address the shortage of space in that school in which a grade 10 school is used to service up to grade 12 students and there is just no space in there.

The other point I want to make here is that the community did point out to the Minister that there is a major impact on the younger students by the higher level, senior students. Peer pressure, discipline suffers because of mixing those two students together. Now, I notice that in a community like here and Inuvik you have Kindergarten to grade 9, then half way across town you have the high school, so that the students do not mix together and do not cause problems for each other. That is smart, but we do not seem to have that allowed in the communities. That is one of the points that I am trying to make here is that the need for capital does not seem to be really put to where it should be.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I would point out for instance, we have been hearing now for two years where Yellowknife has been losing a whole pile of people. I cannot remember the exact figure that is going to be reduced in this particular community by division. They will be either going south or going east, but there will be reduction in this particular community of Yellowknife. In addition, I have been hearing for the last eight or nine months that the mines are shutting down. I look under capital and I see $6 million for two schools for Yellowknife, but the population is dropping. Where is the justification for this? I have a community with a stable population, slowly increasing, but we cannot get a $2 million extension. That is my point, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, in fact, we do try and do some forecasting to project where the needs are going to be. We do find that in a number of communities that things change as time goes along. In Rankin Inlet, for instance, it was not so much that it was forecast to be a capital as the need was demonstrated. What probably caused the biggest change in school numbers in Rankin Inlet was the speed at which grade extensions were added in the other communities in the Keewatin. Nobody expected that Kivalliq Hall would be emptied out as quickly as happened, certainly not anybody in the department or the college. What it did was it saved us the money of building a new college facility because it freed up the space for the college to have a campus there when the students moved out as quickly as they did.

Look at Tuktoyaktuk and, in fact, the school population has dropped there in the last year. It is down by about eight percent this year over last. I think we have made a commitment to work with the community, to look at ways to resolve some admitted deficiencies in that school, to improve the school as much as we can within our limited budget. We will continue to follow through on that. We do recognize that there are some problems and we will do what we can to deal with them. There is not a justification we can see right now for adding onto the school. The situation in Yellowknife is that the school populations here, in spite of what we have heard about lay-offs and jobs lost, have continued to increase a little bit. They have not been going down. I think we should point out that the two projects in Yellowknife are renovations. They are not new projects. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, my only other question here is when will Tuktoyaktuk see their school extension in the capital budget? It is not in there at all. My other comment that I would just like to make is that it is strange that you talk to one department and the population is not going down in Yellowknife, it is increasing. We just finished giving them $450,000 because of all the population loss that they will be recognizing over the time, when either they all went east or they all went south. I do not understand. Sometimes these government departments should talk to each other, so that they all speak with one tongue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In answer to the Member's first question, the five-year capital plan now shows a $2.5 million project for Tuktoyaktuk, tentatively scheduled to begin planning in the year 2000, 2001. Of course, timing is always dependent on school populations. At this point, it shows up in the five-year capital plan as starting the planning phase in the year 2000/2001. As to the Member's second comment, all I can say is the number surprised the department as well when they came in. They are based on October 31st enrolments. We would not have seen them until probably December 1st, at which time the other departments would have made their decisions.