Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have just a couple of questions here. The first is in regard to programs that the college offers. The Minister will have heard questions and concerns raised by other Members in the House earlier about the nursing programs which the college offers. There’s a concern that federal funding is ending I think in March of 2012. The NP educator program, the masters program, and the Introduction to Advanced Practice I believe are all delivered through the college. I’d like to know from the Minister whether or not these programs are going to be able to continue. Is this...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask a few questions. I checked Hansard from yesterday and I was a little confused with the answers I received relative to the funding for the Food First Foundation and where the funding that they’re not getting is now going. I was advised that there were some concerns that were identified. The deputy minister indicated that there were some concerns identified by some of the schools relative to the previous years over this current year’s project. One of the things was that there was an increased workload placed on the schools to administer the program. But...

That’s good. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for the response. I guess it disturbs me somewhat that Members have to tell the Minister how to be creative and that we have to tell our staff what to do. I would hope that they would be constantly looking for ways to save money, and in my estimation an RFP is far better than a tender.

To the Minister not having heard any concerns, that’s great. Maybe there aren’t any, but with a new contractor in any program area, I think there should be constant monitoring in the early days. So the Minister told us that we were going to have a seamless transition a little while ago. I’d...

One last comment I want to make and I would hope that the department is considering this already. Since we are looking at an early childhood framework I would hope that there’s going to be a great deal of consultation with daycares, with child care centres. They vary from certified in-home daycares as well as ones that are in a separate building. I would certainly hope that the department is going to utilize the expertise within these various businesses and consult with them, I would hope, copiously. Thanks.

I’m pleased to hear that the revision is going to be part of the overall evaluation of student financial assistance.

One other result struck me as probably not the best. Table 5 in the report shows the results of student financial assistance service objectives. I was really surprised by the measurements used there. They asked whether or not appointments were met within 15 minutes of the appointment time, whether e-mail replies were received within two days of them being received, whether phone messages or voice messages were replied to within two days. I thought those were pretty lax...

I appreciate the answer. When I raised the concern, the major concern of daycares was that they were not funded on a per student basis in the way that we fund our schools but they were funded basically according to the formula that Mr. Daniels just explained. Their very real concern was when a child was not present in the daycare, they didn’t get funding. It had several ramifications. They have to keep fairly onerous notes and attendance records and submit them in order to get their funding, and the other problem is they don’t know from one week or one month to the next what their funding is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment and I’d like to ask some questions about the student financial assistance client satisfaction survey that was held last year. The survey indicated that in general the student financial assistance staff are doing pretty well, but I was really struck by the answer to one question where 11 percent of the respondents were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the way staff explained their answers. I’d like to ask the Minister what action the department is taking to lower that percentage...

I guess I should use my earpiece, but I didn’t quite hear the answer. It’s to early childhood and student services area? Could I get that clarified?

Thanks to the Minister. I guess my concern is that data accumulation and program evaluation has been part of every budget and what we have previously been putting into this area hasn’t been enough, according to the Auditor General, and I would agree with the Auditor General. My question really is: in the 2011-2012 budget, do we have a greater emphasis -- and by that I probably mean more money -- assigned to data accumulation and program evaluation than in this current year’s budget, the 2010-2011 budget?