Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Minister knows that this department has controlled the superintendents to stay silent on particular issues. This just reaffirms the reporting line by now being known that the person from whom they receive their paycheque, they have to further take direction from the department. This is a major issue; it has been recently a major issue; and frankly, I don’t see this getting any easier.

I say that we can confuse the issue by dangling the carrot of money in front of people and saying, well geez, it’s a money issue. But it’s not necessarily a money issue. It’s a distraction of the fact that these boards are publicly accountable. They table their budgets. They have budget discussions. They invite the public in to talk about them. The boards publicly debate them. The board votes on them. Every one of those folks are, through a duly elected process, brought onto that board.

I’m going to wrap it up very quickly here. They go through an election process, I think, all but one. Frankly, we can talk about the disparity of these things and be confused about the issue. These boards are empowered to make their decisions. Now the government is taking their power back. This colonialism aspect of this government is now taking control of the school boards. We always talk about wanting to draw down and empower people. Well, this is the exact opposite. So I find it offensive that no one talked… The Minister or his staff member didn’t talk about them controlling school board superintendents by giving them the hush order or else. Why don’t we spend some time talking about that? You don’t think that dotted line now becomes a solid line after this situation? If they speak against the department, the department will put undue pressure on them. So let’s not fool ourselves. There’s a lot more happening here behind the scenes than certainly just this one reporting line. Thank you.