Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank Mr. Yakeleya for bringing forward this motion and also extend my appreciation for letting him allow me to work with him on this particular motion and seeing the development.

I believe that the best investment that this government can make in any program is education. We can put them in health and we can put them in wildlife programs, we can put them in business programs, but the absolute best programming that we can put our dollars in is a good, solid education that will enable the next generation coming behind with the knowledge and attitude to go forward and pursue their dreams with the best of abilities, rather

than being handcuffed with the lack of being able to pursue those dreams.

I know what Mr. Yakeleya is talking about because I’ve seen it myself, growing up in a small community. I realize and have experienced the limited programming that they have to offer. I must put a caveat on that particular point. I also saw ingenuity at its finest, where teachers took on programming that they weren’t necessarily familiar with and were able to deliver excellent things on the skinniest of budgets, to ensure that students wouldn’t be held back in any particular way. In being one of the fortunate students and being able to finally come to Yellowknife to finish my high school, all of a sudden you stepped into a new realm of educational opportunities that we did not see and experience. When you go to a biology class that didn’t have all the microscopes and beakers and things like that. Or you go to a chemistry class where nobody can teach chemistry in that particular school. It becomes very challenging for them to ensure that the students who want to pursue the dreams of higher education, who want to be contributors to our society, can’t be limited by what really is just one or two additional teachers into our system. I go back to my original point, which is this is one of the best investments we can make in education.

I recognize the challenges put forward and recognized by Mr. Yakeleya’s motion and I think it makes a lot of sense. With those limited opportunities, what are we asking our students? In all fairness, are we being fair to them by not giving them the opportunity? It’s almost a shame to say or look back to say that the reason you didn’t succeed is because the government couldn’t find money for one more teacher in your particular school to ensure you had a balanced programming that you could actually apply at university. In some cases that’s actually the particular case, because schools are forced to deliver programming on the skinniest of marginal budgets in order to get through. Recognizing, yes, that some schools are very small, but the students are still just as important in those small schools as they are in our larger schools. I think of them in no less value. Are we empowering them with the appropriate skills and abilities to succeed to pursue their dreams, whether it’s a trade school or a university or college programming? Of course, the question constantly comes up as to why do our students, when they speak from the small community perspective, need to go to Aurora College or another type of learning institution to upgrade those skills? That by itself should raise questions of fairness.

It’s incumbent on us to ensure that our successive generation is empowered with the most abilities. I think it makes a lot of sense. If this motion could boil down to a simple point, it’s about fairness and quality programming, recognizing the restraints and

difficulties and the challenges that are in there with the district education authorities and boards in the small communities, I think this can be one of the pillars that propels it to move forward. If you’re a parent, you don’t want to have the stigma by saying if I send my child to my home community school, they’re going to have to go to Aurora College years down the road. That’s not really fair. How do you think the students feel about that particular programming, knowing that their graduation certificate is not as reasonable a merit to quality as someone else’s? I mean, it’s again my point of it’s not fair to temper their dreams just because of where they live. When it really comes down to it, it is only over a few short investment dollars that could go that extra way. If anyone thinks that’s money saved on the system, well, we’re just putting it into another pile or into somebody else’s budget to teach them later on. It doesn’t make sense.

In closing, I want to stress that this probably does a lot from a community perspective, way more than the money alone. The community knowing that their students are graduating with the same quality as any other schooling system in the Northwest Territories is quite an exciting thing. The fear of that and that’s not to emphasize that the quality of programming is bad, I just believe that it’s limited. I think its limitation is what the problem is here. I would not want to let it be clouded to assume that the teachers are doing a bad job, because they are not, but they are working with the limited resources they have. I think that’s what’s holding some of the students back from some of their dreams.

I will be supporting this motion and I again thank Mr. Yakeleya for letting me be a part of this. I think if government listens very carefully, they can go through their own analysis to realize that it is not an expensive initiative that could pay big dividends over the long haul and it meets our goals and objectives as a vision of the 16th Assembly.