As a government, we come up with new initiatives from time to time; maybe all the time, I’m not sure. The Minister has made mention of the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative and now this, with the Education Renewal Initiative. We have heard some pretty dire statistics on the preparedness of students and even ongoing statistics. I would like to suggest to you that those statistics are not prevalent in all communities, in all schools and in all regions. I would say those statistics do exist, but I would say there are schools where there is a lot of success.

I just opened the inside page of the Hub today, and the Parent Action Committee has taken out a full-page ad to illustrate the achievement of the high school students in Hay River. Mr. Bouchard and I had the opportunity to attend the end-of-session assembly at one of the other grade schools in Hay River. The kids that were going up there that we were giving out medals and awards to for achievement in their academics and sports and everything else, was just amazing. The results of these tests in Hay River, I must say – and I’m not trying to put anybody else down or trying to brag here – but the results of these achievement tests in Hay River have just been skyrocketing. It’s just amazing.

This initiative, is this going to make everybody do things differently or could it be targeted to those areas where most needed? Thank you.