As I remember, in Prince Edward Island, $2.6 million or something like that is paid annually for French, as an official language minority language, and for French as a second language. There was an increase of approximately $200,000 last year.
As for the stability of that amount, you should know that every province has a different basic formula, a staffing and funding formula. That's what concerns the school board first and foremost.
I know that, in certain provinces, the formula takes francophone factors into account. There may also be support for little schools in the provincial formula outside the official languages in education program, or OLEP. There are no such factors in Prince Edward Island.
Under the agreement, we fund what we consider are basic services. Rightly or wrongly, that's our situation. We use the funding for purposes somewhat different from what we would like. However, the funding that's there has really been linked to existing resources for many years. It's hard to make changes to the way that funding is used because we could lose resources in the classrooms, for example.
I know that the agreement addresses student retention, for example. However, student retention in Prince Edward Island means that we have a teacher in a classroom who is funded under OLEP. That enables us to offer a fourth year in one province.