Thank you.
I just want to comment on this. Despite the fact that there has been some investment in capital projects in schools this year, I want to turn to the parliamentary budget officer's report, which says that there are “no specific appropriations by Parliament for funding First Nations school infrastructure” and that there's “limited data on expenditure related to school infrastructure” in first nations communities.
He goes on to say that “it is imperative to have a systematic approach and methodology to determine the annual funding that needs to be set aside each year by INAC for the First Nations school infrastructure”. I just wanted to point that out because the parliamentary budget officer does a worst-case scenario and a best-case scenario, and no matter which scenario you use, it points to significant underfunding for first nations schools. That's the capital part.
I want to come back to the operating part just for one moment. A couple of people have talked about the B.C. agreement. I want to be on record here. I certainly do not speak for B.C. first nations, but they have told us on a number of occasions that the B.C. model is for B.C., and as for any suggestion that it's a cookie-cutter approach that can be applied to the rest of the country, the B.C. first nations simply don't support that.
The other issue with the B.C. agreement is that although it was very welcome in British Columbia, the fact of the matter is that the act has been in place now for a number of years and they still don't have the funding. I asked the minister as recently as last week, I guess, about what was happening with it, and they assured us that the negotiations were still ongoing. So three years later, those negotiations, which have direct impacts on children in those communities and on the ability of those schools to deliver first nations education to first nations students, are simply being undermined. So in case anybody wants to get out there and celebrate that agreement, I think it has to be put into the cold context of lack of money, as always.
I just wanted to talk about the operating part. The issue around libraries came up. Mr. Rickford rightly pointed out that it's not this government's initiative that there's no funding for libraries. I want to make it really clear. Actually, I was in a school recently where the department provided the funding to build the structure, but they actually had to rely on charity to fill the room with books. They used the Bartleman initiative in Ontario to fill that room with books.
I wonder if you could comment on the other services that are not part of your base funding. I believe technology isn't.