Thank you. First, Madam Chair, yes, we will get the information Mr. Ramsay has requested that I couldn't give today. In terms of the graduation rate, I can't disagree that we need a better graduation rate. I can't disagree that the Member early on in his comments, talked about how the changes in the mid-90s to the funding for schools has impacted on courses like industrial arts. There's no question that's absolutely true. We have, over the past few years, put money back into funding the schools, but back in the early to mid-90s the pupil/teacher ratio in the Territories was, I believe, just under 13 to one. Obviously, that gave schools the flexibility to put people into teaching positions that would offer more electives and still not have classrooms that were too big. Clearly that can't happen as easily now when you're funding schools at the level of 16 to one. So, yes, there's no question that that's made a difference over the years.

The other thing I think we need to keep in mind is that, at the same time in the mid-90s or early '90s, only 40 percent of the kids who should have been in high school were in high school. We've hit 70 percent recently and that's a pretty dramatic change for that period of time. You're not going to get the graduates if they're not in school. If you only have 40 percent of the young people who should be in school there, obviously, you're not going to achieve anywhere near the Canadian average of 70 to 75 percent. We've now got the participation rate pretty close to the Canadian average. The challenge is to continue to improve on the graduation rate.

You know, in the early '60s the graduation rate in Canada was only about 25 percent. Now across Canada, it is about 75 percent. That's 45 to 50 years that it has taken us to get there. Forty years. We are making fairly good progress, but it is not something that happens in one year. It's something we have to keep working on. The changes we make by improving our kindergarten and the amount of classroom support in kindergarten doesn't show up; the differences there don't show up until 12 years later. So it's a slow process, but I think we've made some important moves and we're committed to carrying on with that. Thank you, Madam Chair.