Thank you for that question. It's a really important one.

I just want to shout out to Anna Marie, Bette, Joette, Patti, Maureen and Heather. They're all the education directors in the communities with the First Nations with Schools Collective.

The earlier comments were that you need good governance and you need stable leaders. The reality of their work is unbelievable. They run transportation contracts. They're developing the curriculum contracts. If they have the money to do it, they are hiring. They're retaining. They're recruiting. They're assessing their principals. They're running community engagement programs. They're trying to purchase resources. They're trying to save money on the purchase of resources. They're trying to negotiate education service agreements with their provincial school boards. They're sitting in on meetings at Chiefs of Ontario. They're sitting in on meetings at AFN. They sitting in on meetings of their PTOs.

There's no way this can continue. That's why you have this governance issue and you have this stability issue. They get burnt out, and we have to start all over with new ones. They have to get paid what they deserve. They're running entire systems. They're running early years programs, post-secondary programs, secondary engagement, the elementary program and adult learning. This is one person, but because we're women, we just keep barrelling on.

I want to hold them up and stand those women up, because that's what they've been doing. It's not sustainable without the proper funding to build a central administration office, which provincial school boards enjoy. I know those superintendents don't do all of that. They delegate, and they can because they have the people in the office to do that. That's the shortfall of this funding approach.

Meegwetch for the question.

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