Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Now that is not a simple answer. So what I can say is that northern distance learning has produced some amazing results. You know, I hear great stories about it. I hear about students who, you know, in small communities who are taking these, you know, advanced level courses, academic courses, and making their way to university. And it's not obvious that they would have that opportunity in their community if not for northern distance learning. So it is a very valuable project, and I'm -- I don't want to say proud, but I'm happy with the investments that this government and the previous government have made into that program. It's been expanded. However, its progress really hasn't been helped by COVID, both because communities, you know, understandably, did not want people coming in to their communities to install the hardware and things like that associated with northern distance learning. As well, there were of course school closures and things like that that -- that slowed things down.
That being said, we are making some progress, and it's been unfortunate that education bodies have been busy dealing with other things with school closures, with school reopenings. It has really hindered a lot of the progress that we would have liked to see.
I can say, though, that because education bodies themselves determine their school calendar, they submit their school calendars for approval, there have been some progress. So I know in the Beaufort Delta, for example, the school calendars have been synchronized this last year.
Now, I haven't spoken with the chair about this but I presume it is for things like northern distance learning because that was -- that's where it's from. Northern distance learning originated in the Beaufort Delta. And however, the DEC, the district education council, the overarching body, their decisions are sometimes at odds with what the communities want. So I've heard from local communities that their desire is to have calendars that differ from their region has not been heard.
You know, in different -- the territory is vast. And even though there could be a single district education council, it covers education bodies over a large area. And you know, one of the main issues is the hunting season. You know, we face that situation here in the Assembly when we look at our calendar and how we want to, you know, when we want to meet. Basically our calendar here is crafted around the different hunting seasons around the Northwest Territories.
Similarly, we hear those concerns from education bodies as well. And so while we have -- there has been movement in aligning calendars within regions, we are not at the point where we have a territory-wide calendar yet. And I'm not sure given local bodies' desires that we'll get there. But we are working on it. Thank you.