Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I'm not sure that the Member is accurate on the numbers. I believe that the average amount that we provide to education councils across the Northwest Territories is about $9,000 per student. The amount of money is not in the hundreds, it is in the thousands.

The amount of money that is provided to education boards across the Territories was cut significantly as a result of federal cuts to our transfer payments in the mid to late 1990s. As a result, our pupil-teacher ratio went from, at that time, to just under 14 pupils to one teacher, to over 18 pupils per teacher. We have, over the past four, five, six years, put significant money back into the system, but it hasn't been enough to get us to that level of funding. We are now funding the system at close to 16 to one, in terms of pupils to teachers.

We haven't taken inflation into account. No department in government has been able to take inflation into account, because of the amount of money that we have been getting from the federal government. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.