R.J. Simpson

Thank you. So day homes are forprofit businesses and nonprofit organizations are, you know, by definition nonprofit. And they have higher operating expenses. They generally have to rent or lease a space. They have salaries. So the parent fees that come into the day care centres versus the day homes don't go quite as far. And so day – child care centre employees are not paid don't earn as much as day home operators. So what we want to do is raise the wages of the child care workers so that we're going to attract more people to the sector but also to try to get everyone on par with each other...

Thank you. I know that I think I'm travelling every week after session for maybe a couple months. But if we're talking if the Member's talking about Fort Resolution, that's an easy day trip for me from Hay River when I'm in town so I'm happy to find the time to do that. Or if the Member's talking about other areas, then we'll work that into our schedule as well. Thank you.

Thank you. So the idea of the new program is it will have one application. If you're a senior and you want assistance with your home heating fuel or you need income assistance, you will make one application and based on your income, you will be, you know, provided either the home heating or income assistance. So that is the plan. Thank you.

Thank you. So there are different ways of providing services in schools across Canada. Some jurisdictions do what we do and they partner with other departments. Other jurisdictions, the education the department of education will actually provide a lot of those, say healthrelated services like the Member might be referencing. And so we are looking at different ways of providing those services.

One of the things that we're doing is renewing the curriculum. And a lot of the services I guess, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to hand it over to the deputy minister, a former teacher who can...

Thank you. $2.3 million is what we are projecting for this upcoming here, and we do not have a wage grid in place. What we are doing is we're providing wage topups essentially. We are providing it this year and in the upcoming fiscal year, we plan to increase that funding. Thank you.

Thank you. And so there used to be a limit on the number of semesters that, as the Member said, P2s could access remissible loans. We have or we are proposing to remove that as well. We've tied the amount of those remissible loans again to the Canada market basket measure. We've increased them again. We are proposing to remove income testing for spouses and not tying them to the years of schooling in the NWT. Thank you.

Thank you. And I know that Alternatives North has been interested in this for some time and then I think they have produced reports in the past possibly, but I know they are working on another one and the department has been involved with them. So it is not something that is completely off our radar. But the Member's correct, it's not going to happen in this budget. But, I mean, the next Assembly could definitely make that a priority. Thank you.

Thank you. So the department increased capacity with two employees who worked student record employees. So they were responsible for ensuring that all of the requests for day school records were handled. And, you know, they were very busy and we actually brought in a bunch of other staff from throughout the department to help with that as well. But that those jobs, or those funds are now sunsetting as well because that the deadline for those for that class action has passed. Thank you.

Thank you. So as I stated, we are put resources in to developing language programming that can be offered at a postsecondary level. My hope is that the college, once it gets its feet under it in terms of the transformation, because there was a lot of work happening there, that they can begin looking at implementing some of those courses and that we can have these, you know, accredited postsecondary courses focused on language revitalization. Thank you.

Thank you. As it was one of our efforts to advance reconciliation. Thank you.