Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The $13 million that I had stated as a surplus was the surplus from 2017-2018. We are projecting that the fiscal year 2018-2019 actually will have a higher surplus. There were some difficulties with the accounting on some of the education bodies during 2017-2018. That bodies, there was only one in deficit, was actually projecting a surplus in the 2018-2019 because of the adjustments to the accounting, so it is not really reflective. Currently, how it stands, as stated earlier, the authorities are allowed to maintain 7 percent of their surplus, and they have to provide a...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my right is Ms. Sylvia Haener, who is the deputy minister of Education, Culture and Employment. On my left is Laura Gareau. She is the assistant deputy minister for Corporate Services. Their role here today is to help me and make sure I don't get into any hot sauce while I am here.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The early childhood program operator subsidy is actually for daycares and family day homes, licensed; licensed daycare centres and licensed family homes. They are application-based for that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My commitment is to look at them and to actually get feedback from as many people. I have concerns, as well. I mean I often worry about giving people cash and then, you know, Christmas comes, and: do I put home heating or do I buy Christmas presents? That is my opinion, and so it would be totally inappropriate to do this based off of my opinion. When we do the evaluation, we will be looking for input from all regions, probably Aboriginal governments and staff and a number of people, to try to find out what is the best solution. The ideal, again, income support is a...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Absolutely. The strategy goes across all sectors. It does not just look at the arts council; it looks at the arts community. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am trying to remember back to the days when I actually ran a daycare, which wasn't too long ago, actually. You have to remember that these positions are not in the daycare every single day. In fact, when I was running the daycare in Yellowknife here, that position came by twice a year, if I was lucky, usually for the inspection and then just prior to the inspection, a couple of months before, to actually do a mock inspection, to talk about things we were doing. So it is not a full-time position, that they need to be in the licensed daycare centres 24/7. It is more of an...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My hope is that the reason it is going to work is because they are going to look from the foundation up. They are going to have a solid game plan. One of the next things that we are doing currently, along with the visioning exercise, is implementing two boards, not just a board with representatives from regions, as our old board was, which was nice. We need a board that has the skills, hopefully regional. One is around governance, how Aurora College is governed. The other board that we are looking at is an advisory board around programs, an advisory board that talks about...

Like I said now, with the adding of four new schools this coming year, that's only bringing us up to 15 schools, and then, next year, we'll be bringing it up to another five, so we can actually have 20 schools. I will put the offer out there to the department and ask them to consider it. I will not make it a full-blown research project with a "what we heard" document, an action plan, and a framework because I don't think we're at that stage yet, Mr. Speaker. I think we're still trying to implement the beginning intent of the programs before expanding it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There were a couple of reasons. First of all, some job descriptions were rewritten in Yellowknife to actually accommodate the support for this. They were more in line with the position. The position in Hay River did not align properly with this position. There were different categories. The other thing, one of the biggest reasons for moving it to Yellowknife was on, I believe, three recommendations or three requests from the NWT Association of Teachers who, as Ms. Haener had pointed out earlier, when people get higher education or training and things, their length of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Every individual is different, so, if they are looking at it, what I would recommend is to go in into the service centre and talk to an income support worker, who would actually give them the guidance to provide the best option for accessing whatever choices they make. It is really difficult to work on a hypothetical situation when I don't even know what I am dealing with or it is just individual A and he doesn't want to get SFA but wants to get income support. That, in my opinion, is not good enough. I would be asking that person, as a client service officer, "What are...