Since the first report in 2010, the department has taken a number of steps to make good on the Education Act's requirement to provide equitable access. I just want to comment on something the Member said earlier, that the department is "passing the buck" to the education authorities in terms of the failure of small communities in terms of education. I've been here five years, and I've never heard any Minister pass the buck. The previous Minister before me, I heard her state that we are failing students in small communities. The day I became Minister, that became my failure, so I'm not passing the buck. The education authorities are our partners, and I'm not putting blame on them. We're all in this together.

To the Member's question, a number of the actions include things like junior kindergarten. That expanded early childhood education across the territory in a way that has never been done before. There is a realization that, in small communities, the teachers and the principals need special training, so we provided special training specific to small-community principals and small-community teachers. Northern Distance Learning is one of the greatest ways that we've been providing more equitable access, and currently that program offers academic courses in grades 10 to 12 to students in small communities who go to schools where the teachers aren't there to teach those programs or the numbers of students aren't there to teach those programs. It really gives students who want to go on to university but are living in a small community the opportunity to do that.

We have recently changed our school capital standards. These are the requirements for what we put in schools when we build them, and we changed those with a recognition that small-community schools need certain things that they weren't getting before, things like gyms, things like spaces for Northern Distance Learning. One of the most significant things that has happened in the past number of years is access to mental health and counselling through the child and youth care counsellor initiative that we are partnering on with Health.

I take the Member's point. We are failing students in small communities. There are no two ways about it. The numbers show it, but I'm owning it. We're doing everything we can to rectify that.