Absolutely, and that is one of the reasons why we are asking for comprehensive school management, including financial management. For the time being, the school board manages $550,000 in federal funding which is provided to the Yukon on a yearly basis, whereas the federal government is actually giving the Yukon government $1.1 million for French first-language education. In other words, we are managing only about half of the federal funding that is being provided.
Our position is as follows: the money from Canadian Heritage for French-language education is complementary funding, given that minority education is more expensive. We argue that our children are Yukoners, that education falls within provincial jurisdiction and that, as a result, they have to pay. They have to pay whatever it costs for our children.
Given that they are also Francophones, the federal government will make an additional contribution for additional costs. Unfortunately, we never see where the money goes; we don't even see where all of the federal money goes. So, we want to know where that money is going. Are we really receiving the share we should receive as Yukoners? We do know that we are not receiving all the federal money, because we only have half of it. That is why we want to manage our education system as a whole. We want to manage the teaching staff, the buildings, own our buildings, manage the buses and caretaking staff, and so on. We want to manage it all, so that we know exactly what our situation is.
This morning, the Deputy Minister of Education told you that there is only one school board. That's true. Francophones are the only ones to have asked for a school board. However, all Yukoners are in a position to ask for a school board. They simply haven't done that. Because the Ministry of Education acts as the school board for all the English-speaking schools, we never see where the money goes or how it is being spent. We know there is a large budget, but we don't know where the money has gone.