Caitlin Cleveland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the apprenticeship housing maintainer program is delivered at the Thebacha campus in Fort Smith, but it's my understanding that there may have been opportunities in the past for the non-apprenticeship version of that course to be delivered in other communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the existing spaces that are being used by this program are not spaces that are owned by Aurora College, and so certainly that space is not one, for example, that I could confirm on the floor of this House but I can confirm that -- you know, first of all, thank the Member for her advocacy and our conversations in regards to adult literacy across the territory. But second, let the Member know that we are certainly following up on this one and seeing what can be done. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, knowing what we know now, I am not making any commitments for 2026. What we did when we paused the reopening of the program in January of this year was we actually went and we sat down with stakeholders before we relaunched the program under new expectations and new parameters. So the work that we're going to do this year in 2025 is sit down with our stakeholders and determine what the program is going to look like in 2026. And so before we've had the opportunity to do that, I won't be making any commitments as to what 2026 will look like. We will...

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'm so happy that the Member from Monfwi brought this up. This is certainly very top of mind. I know that a lot of us in this House have had an opportunity to have really incredible relationships with a lot of the interpreters in this House. And, you know, they do far more than interpret for us. They definitely also take care of our hearts on a daily basis. And so I know that a lot of us get some pretty good hugs coming into this room and a good reset from a lot of the people who, you know, surround us and do such a good job of reminding us why we're here on a...

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And thank you to the Member for highlighting this program. It's certainly the program that I hear the most about, both on the floor and also certainly from constituents. It's a program that's meant to -- for low to mid income seniors to help them address the cost of their fuel. And the policy is to help them up to 80 percent, and then to support them on the budgeting side for the additional 20 percent. And people who have needs beyond that are encouraged, of course, to -- if they meet the criteria, to apply for income support for seniors and persons with...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I am more than happy to send the letters that I have sent to the federal government and share those with committee.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. So, Madam Chair, to respond to the Member's question, it is still a public agency under the Financial Administration Act. And so they still, even at this point, can accept their own federal funding. They can accept their own funding even at this point right now today from other third party organizations as well.

It's also worth noting that certainly the college's legislatively is at a bit of an interim phase here. So there was the launch of the Aurora College's Act in the previous Assembly. And work that is still to be done in this Assembly are items like the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for the question. So in regards to the Student Financial Assistance northern bonus program, the changes that you see within this budget are still reflective of that. The reason being is that we passed the previous year's budget in May/June, so it was different from how we normally do it. And so because the northern bonus program had already had an intake in April of last year, it meant that we had already spent that money. So we were able to reduce the northern bonus program in 2024-2025 by $360,000, and the remaining amount, the $240,000 needed to be...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We've never met our allocation before. So this is new. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. So, Madam Chair, in regards to that line item -- and forgive me, I'm just working to pull that up here. And that was in my -- that's -- sorry, and I apologize because it was in a previous year's budget, so I don't have it readily available in front of me. And, sorry, it -- so for that specific program, it was historically undersubscribed, so we were able to kind of trim off the top without trimming in to what was traditionally used by people accessing that program. Thank you.