Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps I can hold up a pie chart here. I do not know if the Member can see it from his seat but let us say this is the budget the department provides to the Baffin Divisional Education Council. Our formula allocates funding according to these different pieces of the pie. However, we deliver the whole package to

the Baffin Divisional Education Council and they choose to cut the pieces of pie any size they wish. While the Member talks about us having given the Baffin Divisional Education Council only $20,000 for math textbooks, he may not be aware that for material and supplies we gave the Baffin Divisional Education Council $1.8 million and that was to buy books and so on. What we did this year is said because of the introduction of the new math curriculum, we will provide a little bit of a top-up here, but the normal expectation is that out of the ordinary operations and maintenance, divisional educational councils will provide their own supplies for the school year. It is entirely up to divisional education councils as to how they choose to allocate their funds.

We could easily, as we have in the past, provided nothing to divisional education councils when a new curriculum was introduced, and said it is all covered under the material and supplies part of the budget. In this case, we decided to top it up because of the expense of the new curriculum coming in. We have to take a look at this in terms of the bigger picture and that is, all of the funds are going out to the divisional education councils. We use a certain formula to determine the funds each education council gets - so much for operation and maintenance so much for materials and supplies, so much for bussing, so much for senior secondary and so much for special needs. At the end of the day they get that package of dollars and it is up to the councils to determine how best to spend those dollars. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.