Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to make a note, as the Member was talking that yes across Canada and probably North America, there is a teacher shortage, and that retention and training, keeping the teachers that we do have and training our own northern people to be teachers is an issue. The one piece of good news that I have in terms of this year is the teacher turnover is down from 18 percent last year to 12 percent this year which is, for us, a bonus. The issue of TEP, the enrolments are down. The idea, I think, is still a good one. We are looking at trying to go to our fourth year, but once again we have to look at recruiting Northerners to, in fact, apply and take up teaching. What we are finding is that a lot of the TEP graduates have moved on to other kinds of employment. There has been a total of 395 graduates out of TEP between 1969 and 1998. As of last year, 239 graduates were employed in education related professions, classroom teachers, principals, DEC administrators, education consultants, college instructors, etcetera. In addition, 17 of the graduates were employed as preschool teachers and paraprofessionals. Thirty were attending full-time bachelor of education or master of education studies. Fifty-one are employed in areas outside of education. Fifty-eight were retired, deceased or unknown.

The issue of funding that the Member raised is also an important one, but I would like to differ somewhat with the Member that while it is an issue, it is not the only critical issue facing education. To my mind, the issue of the role of the family and the parents working with the child, the relationship of the family and the children with the schools, with the DEAs and the DECs are very critical. Ensuring that you have strong families where you learn your basic values, where you learn who you are, where you are from, where you have your mother and your family reading night time stories to you, where you appreciate the value of education are things that money is not going to solve. I have talked to the people from Hay River, the lady who was very involved, who submitted that survey about that particular issue, and she agreed. I do not think we can lose sight of that fact that, as a government, we have spent billions over the years on a lot of issues. In fact, we have a history of throwing money at things to solve them, that before we had deficit reduction problems, before we had financial problems, we had the luxury of being able to throw money at all sorts of things to solve problems and we created a government that was humungous in size but it did not necessarily solve the problem.

Yes, money is an issue. Yes, the issue of revenues has to pursued vigorously, but there are things we can do as people of the Northwest Territories, as communities, as DEAs and DECs. I would be prepared to discuss that issue with anybody on the value of the family, be it with language, culture, education, what builds a strong society is a strong family. I share the concern for revenues and the need to look at special needs, but I also know that everybody here, anybody that has had the benefit of a strong family upbringing has been able to, for the most part, go on and that is the fundamental building block of our society. To lose sight of that fact would be to do so at our peril. Because money is not going to solve the issue of a strong family.

The PTR is not an attempt to mislead. It is a relatively standard funding approach used across Canada to determine budgets and budget allocations to schools and school boards. The issue of insufficient funds for new programs is a concern, but clearly the issue of grade extensions, in fact, save the government money. They were spending over $8 million dollars a year on the various residences that they had running, Akaitcho Hall, Ookavik in Iqaluit, Grollier Hall, Kivalivik Hall in Rankin Inlet. There have been demonstrable benefits to grade extensions. Our numbers indicate that access has increased prior to grade extensions from below 65 percent to over 90. Grade 10 to 12 participation has increased from 30 percent to above 60 percent. Graduation rates have been climbing in the last few years, about five years behind the increase in participation rates, which is quite reasonable with the lag time for students to work their way through the system. I do not think we can just dismiss out of hand that grade extensions have not worked. Has it been a perfectly flawless exercise? I do not think so. Can it be improved? It probably can.

The issues we have talked about in this House in the past few weeks about the quality of education and the small communities not having the same selection of courses and program choice as large communities, those kinds of issues have been debated. I do not think, as I have indicated, dismiss out of hand grade extensions. Very clearly, in my mind, as I have indicated in this House, there is no going back to the days of large residential schools where the average cost was about $40,000 per student. That is the number I have been given. Yet, yes, there is a place for family oriented smaller programs, but very clearly, the days of the residential school that history has given us are over in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.