Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, too, would like to thank the committee for their efforts on this controversial challenging issue. Like my colleague from the Delta, coming from a small community, it can be challenging as it is in any profession, and I feel that teaching is a noble one. We had, in one of the communities back home, 100 per cent turnover of the teachers. That is an indicator. A school is no good without any staff within.

We are faced with a number of other obstacles to attract high quality teachers in these smaller communities, and the indicators are there to say there is some trouble here. We have got minimal graduation rates, lower than national averages. Those are indicators that something is not working, which results into a joint effort and a joint challenge by the parent community and the teachers. The teachers need time to prepare. Not only do they prepare for the classroom chores, but beyond and outside the regular hours, we have teachers in probably every community that set aside their own time to try and gather the youth into the area of sports. In the community of Fort Good Hope, we have got an excellent team of young boys there that have won territorial level games here in Yellowknife. I witnessed that over the last couple of years here, and I am quite proud of those fellows there, but equally said, recognition should be given to the teacher also in having to work outside the classroom to encourage and provide activities there for the youth and keeping them off the streets.

For all those reasons, and in the classroom as well, we have a number of cases here that there are multiple class grades within the same room. Preparing our high school students to enter in post-secondary is another challenge there, because it is not the grade examination. It is the same examination as our neighbouring provinces, but we ask ourselves, well, why? I guess one of the reasons why is that the quality of delivery is really not there, because it is faced with numerous remote, isolated challenges, and not all stakeholders are on site and facing those challenges at the community level. Those are my short comments, Mr. Chair. Thank you.