Thank you Madam Chair.
I have a couple of comments before I pose a question.
I think I have been around here too long because I can remember too many of these reports. To get back to Mr. Mayes' comment about the Inuit, back in, I think it was 2005, Justice Berger issued a report which in part dealt with education in Nunavut. He indicated, I believe, that about $20 million needed to be infused into the education system in order to meet the conditions in the land claims and self-government agreement. To my knowledge, that report was never officially responded to. You don't need to respond to that.
Mr. Mayes also mentioned the post-secondary report that the committee worked on, which was a very good report. One of the committee's recommendations was to infuse some additional funding into the PSSSP, the post-secondary student support program, and the ISSP, the Indian studies support program. Instead what we've seen are unilateral changes to the ISSP that have made it very difficult for some institutions to carry on with some of the very good aboriginal programming that they were doing.
The third piece I wanted to raise was with regard to per capita funding for K-to-12 schools on reserve. The number that's being floated out there and consistently used says that the funding is somewhere between $12,000 to $14,000 per student. That is utter nonsense. On-reserve schools do not get the same level of funding as off-reserve schools. The number that is being floated is the gross amount of money divided by the gross number of students, and that includes students who first nations have to pay for to attend provincial schools. I've seen the memorandums that demonstrate that sometimes on-reserve schools will get $6,000, $7,000, or $8,000 but they'll be paying off-reserve schools $12,000 or $14,000.
We need to clear up this notion that first nations on reserves are getting exactly the same or equitable funding as off-reserve schools. It's simply not true. You can ask any first nations community that is in that situation. If the committee would like it, I can provide some documentation to that effect so that we can quit using that number which is simply not true.
I want to ask Mr. Clarke about FNLMAs.
We would agree, Mr. Clarke, that FNLMAs are certainly a way forward in terms of control in the community of land development, economic opportunity, and certainty. It's a very good program. My understanding is that at the last count there were about 80 first nations that were on the wait list for FNLMAs. Is that still correct, Mr. Clarke?