Thank you for that question.
In terms of remoteness, it creates significant challenges in many ways. One, of course, is being able to provide those educational opportunities that otherwise are attainable in urban centres. Second to that, of course, is connectivity and ensuring that the infrastructure's in place if you are going to do other things to ensure students have that access to either online learning or other aspects of that.
The reason Saskatchewan is in the process of going to a Treasury Board Crown for centralized online learning is to provide those opportunities to students in remote and rural areas that perhaps they wouldn't otherwise get. It's very important to have a teacher in place to support that online learning. However, the specialities are where you can really get into specifics in terms of supporting those students and ensuring they have the credits and the opportunities for further post-secondary education or entering the workforce.
Obviously there are lots of compliments to the federal government, as well as federal governments of the past and provincial governments, in terms of infrastructure development. We're only as good as the infrastructure in many communities. When you have SaskTel, the provider of telecommunications in the province, putting in infrastructure, those are huge things that need to take place in order to provide those online learning opportunities. Again, infrastructure is a big piece there.
To challenge the remoteness aspect, I think there's a key thing that all levels of government should consider. We have a centralized model of providing services to our citizens of Canada and of our province, but at times there's a decentralization movement that's also important. It is ensuring that service providers develop relationships with communities and go into communities. I know everyone from health, education and different aspects do go into communities, but it's creating that important relationship as you go in and build off it.
In educational terms, if you are sending in online learning supports, it's very important that those teachers who are working with those students actually go into the community at some point and talk to the students face to face and understand where they're coming from, their challenges, their opportunities and their families. Is it ideal and perfect based on the time commitment? It isn't always, but it's an extremely important thing that needs to be done to tackle remoteness and remote and rural types of learning opportunities.