Mr. Chairman, I’m not disagreeing in any way that funding adjustments need to be reflective of situations that have to make them work. If the Minister either hears me or should be listening carefully, I’m speaking to the fact that I think they should be accommodating those things.
But I think this is a formula that could work in the long haul for every school equally, where we start funding them appropriately. A building should be properly staffed and properly maintained, or else we end up getting into deficits. What I mean by that is it could be an educational deficit, where we don’t have the appropriate teachers to teach all the courses needed, and therefore the kids are missing out, or we don’t have the proper staff to run the facility, or it’s a deficit of finances when it comes down to maintaining the building. I feel very strongly about the examination points of this.
I guess my question to the Minister is: would they take a look at other jurisdictions to see if this is their funding principle on how they fund some of the school organizations to ensure that certain sizes of school have music teachers, certain sizes of schools have librarians, those types of things? They don’t fall under the typical funding formula.
That said, the leftover money — the school boards are challenged to make sure they continue to deliver competent programs, and I think they do. But I think they’re already running at full pace to make sure they can deliver what they have to deliver. I think, truthfully, it’s my opinion that the choices given to them are extremely limited, and it makes it excessively challenging.
With all of that said, I guess I look to the Minister and ask: would they take on the challenge to take on the task to get out there and take a look at how other jurisdictions fund their schools and see if it’s comparable to the Northwest Territories, to ensure we’re delivering the same solid funding levels, in principle again, to our schools as they do out there?