Mr. Speaker, the question by the member for Timmins—James Bay highlights just one of a number of factors that we are consistently seeing. The special needs education budgets do not meet the needs of the communities and often people need to move money around in an attempt to meet the deficit in the communities when it comes to spending on special education.
We had department officials at the aboriginal affairs committee a week or two ago. One of the questions we raised with them was what happens when a school burns down. Attawapiskat, for example, is on a contaminated site. We asked them how priorities were established in terms of funding those schools.
We found that schools, which may have been on the list for years, are bumped down again when a crisis emerges. Therefore, there is no reinjection of money to deal with the fact that many of these students are actually being farmed out throughout their community because their schools have either burned down or are contaminated.
There just is not the kind of priority or understanding around what it means to students in those communities to not have schools that at least meet provincial standards.
Whether it is special education, schools that are contaminated or burned down, housing or water, we are continuing to see a litany of problems in these communities that the government is failing to address.