Thank you, Madam Chairperson. Madam Chairperson, I would just to speak briefly to the comment about the process that my colleague, Mr. Henry, raised. It is unfortunate that this debate is taking place at this late date in the budgeting process where as Mr. Henry indicated we have two choices either to pass or to cut. It is unfortunate that when this process started nine months ago that we did not lock ourselves away to have the discussion where we wanted to take money from, how we wanted to put money into education, and I would like to reference the fact as I did a couple of weeks ago in the House that the combined committee reports from every committee very clearly addressed the issues of their committee, a wrap-up government operations report touches on common issues but no where in there, and I sat on the committee up until recently of the social programs, no where in there is it indicated anywhere in my reading of this document right here of the need to move money, to take money from other sources, other departments so, yes it is an issue.

In fact I recollect last week, for instance, a motion being passed to accelerate Highway 3. I believe it is a $9.0 million project. At the same time we are being asked to look for money for smoking cessation and those kind of programs. All laudable and important priorities but, once again it is a question of balance, and it is taking this debate in regards to finding more money in the short term is unfortunately somewhat late.

In regards to not demanding higher graduation rates, that recognizing that there are a lot of special needs students that may need earlier exit points to other kinds of employment or education, I would say that at this point our graduation rates are still too low. We have to continue to focus on graduation rates. We guesstimate that it could be as high as 30 percent of our children in schools have special needs but that leaves 70 percent that we should be encouraging to graduate and we have not hit that number yet. I would say once again it is an issue of balance, trying to meet the needs and I think we have an obligation to try to meet the needs that are out there, that we do not have the luxury of only wanting to focus on one or two that this is not a case of a type of triage but it is more a case of trying to balance and meet all the priorities and competing needs with the limited dollars that we have.

Do grade extensions create unrealistic expectations of students that they can stay in their communities? It is possible. I agree that the issue of mobility is an issue that we have to reinforce that you will in all probability have to go out to further your education and there is a chance that you may not find employment in your community but we have to make sure that we, in fact, have sufficient numbers of educated Northerners to take the skilled positions that are currently going begging down south. So, yes, it is an issue within communities but it is tied into larger issues. The final comment I would like to make is that I heard a couple of days ago, just to reinforce the issue of the importance of education, a documentary in which they were talking to a number of people from Greenland and they were getting a retrospective after twenty years of home rule and the final comment by one of the Greenland people was after 20 years of home rule and still having to import just about all their skilled labour was education, education is what you have to put your money to if you want an educated northern society that can in fact not only govern itself politically, but can also have the skilled people to fill the positions, the even more critical positions to do the work, to do the jobs. So, once again, I think we all have the same concerns, it is a question of how do we get there? Thank you.