Thank you, Mr. Chair. The amount of money that we have increased in the system over the years has certainly gone up. It is true. In terms of from 2001-02 to what is funded in 2005-06 for Yellowknife 1, which is the board that has the school the Member is talking about, the increase has been about $1 million for their system in funding. But most of that increase has happened in the very recent past. It is a situation where, with the spreading out of the money through all the boards, not one board has seen a dramatic increase in any one year. One of the things we have done, too, is tighten up on the amount of money that...or the way the money is reported back to us, how it is being spent. We did find, when I became Minister and started looking into what was happening to the money, that there were some school boards that were using special needs funding for things like funding whole-day kindergarten. I directed with the directive that I sent out that that not happen any further and that we really tightened up on the accountability.

The new directive that we are proposing that will be out within the next two months will tighten up on that even more by ensuring that everybody uses a common code of accounts and that the activities are better reported to us so that we can confirm that the money that was being voted by this Assembly now is actually for special needs, is actually going into special needs. It appears that that wasn't always the case in the past, but I am quite comfortable that, in the last couple of years, that has been the case. We also know that we are nowhere near dealing with the problems that we are faced with in the classroom. There are a tremendous number of youngsters who are coming into the system with a lot of needs. There are problems that we are aware of now that, 10 years ago, we weren't even aware of as issues. For instance, I don't think 10 years ago that an auditory processing disorder was ever caught, where that is now becoming something that is much more commonly found in our system and in our schools. The schools have to deal with those issues. While it may not seem, when you look at one school, that you are seeing a big difference. I think that the amount of money that has gone in has been important in letting schools deal with issues. What we are

talking about over the next three years will help schools deal even better with some of the issues that they are faced. One of the key things is going to be the coordination between Health and Social Services and Education that we are trying to get with these teams that will visit schools so that we can, we hope, dramatically improve the services to kids who present with really serious problems.