Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I believe it was Mr. Ramsay who had a debate item that kind of interested me. It was with the graduation rates and course completion rates and that's something that I've been dealing with the Minister on over the last couple of weeks, especially in the smaller regional centres. I'm sure I agree with the Minister and the department, that whatever we can do to improve graduation rates and course completion rates would be a boon to our young people, to our schools and to our communities.

I came upon a gap, perhaps in the system and maybe the Minister can address that for me, is that I propose, I said, hey, there is this nice program I ran across, I got support from the community of Liard. I said the department should look at this program, specifically with the Sunchild E-Learning Program that has been used around Rocky Mountain House on the smaller reserves there. Here is a program where they are improving graduation rates, astronomically in our terms, in our levels, because theirs is at 80 percent and ours is at 45 percent. It is even smaller yet as we do the breakdown and get to the smaller communities, Mr. Chairman.

Of course, then course completion rates are right up there in these small communities, and they are similar communities, they are aboriginal communities, aboriginal schools, with the same types of social problems happening in their homes and their communities. Yet they are achieving some success. I am saying I would like to check it out, how it can be applicable to us, what we can learn from it, indeed if there is anything there that we can use.

That is all my proposal was, Mr. Chairman. I didn't want to do a whole scale change of the department, their priorities and all their goals and objectives which they have strived so hard to do. All I wanted to say is that here is something that is working in another community. Can we look at it? Can we get our department officials to seriously consider it? Because anything, like I said earlier, Mr. Chairman, that improves our communities and the lives of our people in those communities, we are going to have to do it. In fact, I am obligated to do it and if I chose to ignore it, then they will choose to ignore me too. Perhaps if the Minister can address that at this point.

I know that we have some type of programming out there. Just looking back in the main estimates, Mr. Chairman, there is a category, education operations and development, I think that is something that will fit in there. I noticed that the budget, in that particular line item, increased by $700,000 and the Minister indicates to me that he checked his front pockets and he checked his back pockets and they are both empty and there is nothing more he can do. I see that they doubled the thickness of the wallet, so I don't know how he can say that, Mr. Chairman.

Perhaps I can just get the Minister to comment with respect to new development objectives, exploring new options and keeping our mind open, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.