Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on an issue that has been raised in this House on many occasions, and it has to do with education. Mr. Speaker, it has been some time that this government has moved away from regional centres in the sense of providing high school classes in those centres, and have gone out to extended grades, as they call it, and moved to other communities in the Northwest Territories to provide higher levels of education to try to address the issue of young men and women having difficulties adjusting or moving into larger centres to get a higher education.

Mr. Speaker, it has been some time since that move has happened. I think it is time to see if we are measuring up in terms of providing successes in those areas. The move was not only to have more students going to school, but to have more success in going to school and have more graduates for residents of the Northwest Territories.

What we found in the community of Inuvik was that we were negatively impacted in the sense that when the students no longer came to our community that lowered the number of teachers we were able to have in our schools and that impacted our ability to deliver specialized programs in the sciences and so forth.

Mr. Speaker, I think we need to look up as well since those days, at the success rates we have had in the Northwest Territories amongst grads competing with those across the country to see where we have gone with the numerous changes we have done within education and other sectors in this government. In fact, Mr. Speaker, it was enough of a concern to the Beaufort-Delta leaders in my area that they raised the issue and pushed to have tests start again to measure where students were. Mr. Speaker, we found that when those tests were performed, a lot of our students were not measuring up in the sense of national marks or the national standard, and we found that we had some work to do.

I think those tests show the result, Mr. Speaker. One is the measurement of where we stood in the process of education, teaching our youth, and it is also a help to parents, Mr. Speaker, that we need to be able to measure where our children are. With that, Mr. Speaker, I will have questions for the appropriate Minister. Thank you.

-- Applause