Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks to our witnesses.
Ella, I see you have a whole bunch of fans behind you supporting you today in Ottawa. I just wanted to say a shout-out, and thank you for coming. It's no pressure at all, eh?
I see an article here from a few years ago: “Grade 7 students speak out about Iqaluit school bus overcrowding”. You're mentioned in the article—you and your friend Vanessa. Your advocacy now extends to Ottawa. I applaud you for just standing up and being counted for your opinion.
We're here about graduation rates and how we could see them get better. You talked about dropping out being a problem, and we've seen that statistically too. It's a big issue, especially in indigenous and Inuit communities. You said that part of it is an English language barrier or an Inuktitut barrier in education. You talked about how there has been talk before about strategies to address those problems, but then you said that the strategies had not been followed through. I think that's where it lands with us to say that this can't continue or else it just isn't going to get better.
I was a former teacher. I taught high school for about seven years, and I went to university and all of that. I'm going to ask you a simple question, because I think that nobody can explain better how to fix a problem or how to do better other than somebody who has been through that system in Nunavut. What would you do if you were the boss? How would you make it better?
That's a big question, but what are some simple things that are just as simple as helping your colleagues in school graduate when they didn't before? What are some simple things that we can look at? Maybe it isn't simple, but what are some things you would recommend that we do to help that rate go up?