Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This position is part-time, but we do have the regional early childhood development coordinators who actually provide the support necessary to the region, as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. "Autonomous," I'm not going to look it up in a dictionary. Maybe my staff. If you really want that, I can get it to you. The reality is that we provide Aurora College $32 million in a contribution agreement. When we did the review, the review stated out very clearly that they felt that Education, Culture and Employment was too entrenched in the college, and it said they need to be arm's length. They need to have their own autonomy to find what they want, grow up.

The government response came back and said that we will be; Education, Culture and Employment will take it over...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am going into the Nahendeh riding for a constituency tour, as long as the plans all follow through and we can get a double-engine plane. Anyone I hear at those meetings, I am willing to talk to. I am willing to listen to all of the concerns of the people, of whoever I meet with. That has just been my style. However, for me to make any commitments around how we are going to deal with upgrading or the community learning centres at that time would be inappropriate, because that is a process that has to be done within our polytechnic university as we move towards that...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Right now, we have 11. With the rollout of these extra four. That will bring us to 15, and then next year, we are looking at bringing it up another five, so that will bring us to 20 small schools, including the riding of Nahendeh.

I would love to be able to just say, like, "Yes, we are going to go live, and you know, it will be accessible to everyone," but it is very expensive programming and it takes a lot of work to actually do things like curriculum development. It is huge. Getting the teachers trained and providing that is huge. Also what I thought it would be a small...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The idea of the income support through the productive choices is to provide people the support so that they can prosper as they define "wellness," but, again, income support is for basic needs. If people are looking for education, they may need to combine the two programs together. They may need to combine that with the student financial assistance, if they qualify, and then sometimes people do need to be topped up with that, with income support. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The understanding is that they will be indeterminate unless we decide to give back control to the federal government. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It is a three-year program, I believe. I am not sure what will happen with the new election that comes up. I agree that it is important programming. I think that we need to try to lobby to make sure that it goes further. I also think that we need to work better towards this.

I have heard comments that some schools are taking it and some aren't, and I think it is something that we should bring to the education leaders' table. I think we would be a lot better off if we coordinated within the regions and actually did it through councils and then assimilated to the schools...

Just a quick comment. Just to say that graduation rates, sometimes, it not just that the students don't graduate. In some of the smaller communities, there are actually no students in those higher grades for various reasons. We have a community with five students, period. Those are the realities of some of the schools that we're dealing with. It's not always because they just don't get through. Sometimes, the cohort of children aged is not at that time yet. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I do know that there are only two French language schools, but there are also 47 other schools that I am also responsible for, so it is something that I have to make sure that I spread my ability throughout. As for looking at it right now, if that was brought to me, actually, when I first started in April or two years ago, before it was my portfolio, I would have considered it, but we have six months left, and it is in the legislation. It is inappropriate at this time to start looking at that. We just don't have the time in this Assembly.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As part of the evaluation that we are doing right now, we have submitted a survey to parents asking about the SCIP program and their feedback on it, as well. They will be part of the evaluation. Thank you, Mr. Chair.