Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps I will just deal with the Member's last question first, where he is talking about the $700,000. Just so that he doesn't think that I manage to keep any of it between my front and my back pocket, that money is all going to Alberta. That is what they are charging us to use their Alberta achievement tests, which is the test that we are using in grades 3, 6 and 9. They have started charging us now for using their Grade 12 tests. Not one penny of those dollars is sticking in my pockets, with this Assembly passing it on to Alberta. Just so you know.
In terms of the proposal the Member talked about, it is certainly something that is of interest to us. The Member is aware that the department has contacted the divisional education council. As I told the Member, the department doesn't deliver education, we fund the people at the DECs to do that. When you are talking about delivering an educational program, that is where it has to come through.
We have contacted the DEC to examine their interest in this. We are prepared to work with the DEC to facilitate their examination of the Sunchild model. We are certainly prepared to discuss that with them and work with them to facilitate their examination of it, for consideration.
I will note that the Member is right; we do already offer the same kind of programming in the Northwest Territories as what Sunchild does. It is distance learning and we have offered that for quite some time.
It is interesting to note that at the Sunchild learning model they talk about how learning has to be community centred. It has to be embraced and promoted by the larger community and not just the school. If I remember a little bit earlier when asked what I thought what the biggest reason for success was, it was family support for education; family and community support. I think that is what we are seeing in the Tlicho region. That is what Sunchild says is the most important part. They also say that there has to be champions in the community for e-learning, there have to be key teachers and relationships. They say key teachers have to come from the First Nations community. For us, that has always been a challenge, finding enough teachers in the North from the home communities and it is certainly one of the reasons we introduced the Teacher Education Program in the Northwest Territories, was to increase the numbers of home-grown teachers, because we really do need to get more of them.
I think that what we will find is that this model is very much in line with what we see as necessary for success, and we are prepared to work with the DEC to help them examine the model to see whether or not it can work for the community. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.