Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the issue of grade extensions, when you take a look at the grad rates, the document I tabled earlier today clearly indicates that doing grade extensions has made a significant difference in terms of the numbers of young people who are staying in school through to completion. There's no question, though, that we can't offer the variety and depth of programming in our smallest communities that we can in a larger community. That's always going to be the situation, just as a high school in Yellowknife doesn't have the same variety of courses that a high school in Edmonton has. You just don't have the economies of scale to be able to offer the same range.

We've started discussing among DECs what we can do to improve on the offerings within those small communities. There are a number of ways that we need to start looking at expanding how we do business to make sure that we can improve on what's available. There's no reason that you can't offer the academic courses at a smaller school.

It may take some work by distance education. Or it may take a school district taking a look at an instructor who moves from the communities, or maybe who's in one community but we set up a video link between the other two, three or four communities in the region. I've talked to the DEAs and the DECs in the regions about how we have to start making some moves in this area to ensure that we are offering the best opportunities possible to our students.

Some of the changes that we're making this year by providing the extra funding for student support, by decreasing the pupil/teacher ratio will also free up resources for other course offerings in the smaller schools. These monies are going to be disproportionate so that the smaller schools are going to see more of the money than the larger schools, though. It's not being handed out on a per capita basis. It should help to improve the flexibility in all schools, but it should be really evident in the smallest schools across the Territories. I'm hoping with that flexibility will come some opportunities for innovative ways to deal with the challenge that we have with broadening out our course selection.