Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, when we had our hearing in Yellowknife, the executive director of the NWTTA said that the status quo in education was not the answer to where we are in terms of student achievement and teacher wellness. I agree with that. I agree with that statement. We need to improve student outcomes in every grade, not only in graduation. The process of getting to the point we are at now, reporting on this bill has been made unnecessarily difficult by poor communication by the Department of Education, Culture and Employment.
In the case of JK, the standing committee and our colleagues on this side have worked very hard to ensure that full funding for junior kindergarten is, in fact, full funding. That was not given proactively. It was something that had to be wrangled about, and I think that we do have some good results. But this is a perfect example of what my grandmother would have said was "penny wise and pound foolish." This could have been a good news story right from the beginning if adequate resources had been pledged willingly and proactively instead of being extracted an inch at a time. Likewise, with the Strengthening Teacher Instructional Practice, this also could have been a good news story but it was not because once again, the major problem with this is that there are not enough teachers in our school system, and the teachers who are there now are too hard-pressed to do anymore, a point which I heard repeatedly, and which I do not doubt at all. But rather than providing a proactive approach from a communications point of view, the Minister left it to the standing committee to explain this initiative to incredulous parents and to supportive teachers. As a result, once again, we have ended up wrangling right up until today about amendments and about support for the bill itself. If there is a takeaway from this entire process, it is that communication between the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, and its stakeholders, and that includes parents, students, teachers, Regular MLAs, needs to be improved. We are not your last thought. We need to be your first thought, and that is not what I am seeing here, and the process has been made unduly difficult as a result. Thank you.