Mr. McFarland: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I've been hearing from three of the school boards in our riding about recent cuts of some $80 million to school board budgets. In addition, I think many of us have seen the ads where the ATA and the ASBA have expressed their interest in this issue. To the minister: if investing in our education is really so critical to the economic prosperity and recovery of this province, why would the minister contemplate taking some $80 million from some of our school boards when they themselves feel it would be counterproductive?

The Speaker: The hon. minister.

Mr. Hancock: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When the budget was presented earlier this year, it was clear that there was an in-year adjustment that was going to be required, and every department was asked to do a value review of their functions to determine what savings could be made to meet that target for the adjustment. Our assigned target was $80 million. We looked at what was happening in our department, and we took $24 million out of the budget to the department by seeing what could be deferred, what could be done differently, how we could do it in a different way. That's 20 per cent of the budget to the department itself. The others were assigned to the school boards to come out of reserves.

The Speaker: The hon. member.

Mr. McFarland: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. While I accept the explanation, as a former trustee myself the question begs answering: why would a board that is fiscally prudent and puts money aside for identified projects be penalized or have money taken back when those boards who haven't been as fiscally prudent have nothing to contribute?

Mr. Hancock: Mr. Speaker, what we were trying to accomplish was to make sure that the students in the classroom were not affected by this adjustment. That was the important outcome that was necessary for the process. When we went to the school boards, we first adjusted two grants that could be adjusted by virtue of results from Statistics Canada. In other words, we do one top-up grant for cost indexing and another one for socioeconomic status, so those would have been adjusted in any event. School boards would have expected that. Then we went to school boards and said: we'll take up to but not more than 11 per cent of your operating reserve and ask you to take it out of operating reserve, not out of the classroom. In other words, we all saved for a rainy day. We all saved for a purpose. Now is the time when we need to use some of those resources not to cancel projects but to stretch them out.

The Speaker: The hon. member.

Mr. McFarland: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the minister. I guess the next obvious and final question is: of the boards that you took money from, when we return to balanced budgets, would you specifically look at returning money to those specific boards who contributed to this situation in the first place?

Mr. Hancock: Mr. Speaker, what we are doing is having conversations with boards around the province and asking them to participate with us in the value review process so that decisions can be made, as we go forward, on a thoughtful, evidence-based, and value-driven basis, and we will be doing that with boards. There will be some changes as a result of our discussions, undoubtedly, in funding formulas. I have to say that not all boards would agree that the funding formulas have been effective for all of them to date, so they're all thoughtfully working with us on developing the right funding model, recognizing that we're in difficult fiscal times but also recognizing that all of our decisions need to be based on evidence and value driven.