Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister, for joining us today.
My question is going to be around the regional educational agreements and some of the challenges and barriers we're seeing to moving in that direction.
Not everyone may be familiar with what regional education agreements are. To give some context, we have an amazing example of this in Nova Scotia, with Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey. Twenty years ago in Nova Scotia, the first nations graduation rates were at 30%. Today they're at 90%, which are some of the highest graduation rates of first nations across the country. When I talk to the co-chair of the organization, Chief Leroy Denny and his staff, Blaire Gould, they all attribute it to the fact that now they are working together collectively as communities on education. Through that collaboration, they are able to focus on language, on culture and on really decolonizing education.
You said in your speech that we have nine regional education agreements from across the country. I'm wondering if you could tell us what you've seen as best practices.
Why is this the best practice? Why is this working? How can we create more communities that go down this route?