R.J. Simpson

Thank you, and I take the Member's point that, in the previous three years, a lot of the work was focused not on necessarily increasing availability and affordability but on shoring up the foundations and using early childcare as a way to educate our youth and to prepare them for school. However, going forward, we are mandated to increase availability and to increase affordability, so we have a number of mandate items directly related to that. In the negotiations of the new agreement, we will be pursuing those as our priorities. Thank you.

Thank you. Right now, the Senior Home Heating Subsidy, I think a lot of people see it as covering 100 percent of the costs. The fact is that it is intended to cover about 74 percent of the average cost of heating a home, an average home, in a particular region; and so each region is different. What we are proposing and what we are going to do is increase that 74 percent to 80 percent. It's not 100 percent, but it is a larger increase.

One of the issues that I find people run into that, you know, this was a cold winter, especially up in the Beaufort-Delta, and seniors, they spend all of their...

We don't have the actuals for this fiscal year yet, as we are still in it, but in 2017-2018, there was $948,000 spent, so nearly the entire budget. In 2018-2019, it was down to $655,000, so there was a carry-over of over $400,000, and that is due to a decrease in the number of apprentices, the new registers, from 92 in 2017-2018 to 70 in 2018-2019.

Thank you, that increase to travel was to support training opportunities for Indigenous governments. Thank you.

Thank you. No, there is not.

That is correct.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That, it seems like it would be a simple fix, but for some of the details on this, with your indulgence, I would like to hand it over to Mr. MacDonald.

Thank you. If I could hand it to Mr. MacDonald?

Thank you. At this point, we haven't done that work. A lot of times, people are bringing in pay stubs, they're bringing in things from the bank, and those are being brought in for verification. It isn't something that really lends itself, but that being said, I'll look into what other jurisdictions are doing and see if there are efficiencies to be found in that way. Thank you.

Thank you. I know that we still offer scholarships for Indigenous languages, and we have Indigenous language broadcasting money in the contributions section, instead of the grants section. There's been a bit of a reallocation. I believe these were program-specific, the ones from 2018-2019. I can get more details on that, though, for the Member, if that's okay, Madam Chair.