Caitlin Cleveland

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, part of the work under the Canada Council for the Arts grant is to do work through a coordinator whose role is funded through that MOU in order to ensure that we're doing what we can as a territory with the funding that we do have in order to multiple that by accessing additional federal funding as well. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I want to start off by just pointing out that the two or kind of apples and oranges because one is talking about JK to 12 education; the other's talking about Aurora College, and they're very separate. In regards to the Member's question about the reduction for our territorial schools and administration, that number is enrolment driven. And so while I did, as Minister, use that number to bring to my colleagues within this fiscal sustainability exercise, that is a number that goes up and down year after year because it is based entirely on enrolment...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the department was able to look at the last five years of that spending line item and able to identify that over the last five years, typically $150,000 of that subsidy was not spent. And so I would absolutely love the opportunity to go over budget on that line item this year and would challenge my colleagues to help me find employers willing to help us do that. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as acknowledged previously, I did have the opportunity to listen to the same CBC radio interview which I believe is where that headline came from. What I did hear in that radio interview was an acknowledgement by the chair that the transformation has been delayed. And, Mr. Speaker, I continue to have said the same thing now for the entirety of this session on the floor of the House. Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER:

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Chair, the spaces in Tlicho region would be licensed spaces so any space that is licensed would be included in that 1,956.

I was passing back to the Member, sorry.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, all of these pots of funding for these grants are applicationbased, and so it would entirely depend on if there were more people trying to access the same amount of money or less people for any given year. So it would depend on many different factors.

The other thing too to note, because I know there has been some questions lately about having deadlines for applications, and one of the things that's really important is that you don't see all of the money funneled into one region in the territory and that there is some equity in how funding is disbursed the...

Thank you so much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, if the goal is for our child care providers to be paid on par with education assistants across the territory, then the ask would need to be $3.5 million for wages and $3.5 million for compensation and benefits.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, yes, the department was aware that this program was operating and was also aware that the program was a funded program through CanNor and that it did have a sunsetting time period. Any desire to have ECE support renegotiating that was not reached out to the department for. But I'd like to also pass to Mr. Saturnino as I think that the Member is eager to hear from him as well. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, like I've said before, in my time here today, there would definitely be  I could find many ways to spend money, and my husband always says I'm definitely very skilled at it. But I would need to evaluate that to make sure that at the end of the day we, as a department, are getting the biggest return on our investment and ensuring that we are spending money as responsibly as possible in tune with the priorities of this Assembly. Thank you.