Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My statement today is a continuation of some of the discussions that were held in the House yesterday. This morning I woke up and listened to all the reports on the news about inclusive schooling that had a lot of Members here asking a lot of really tough and difficult questions in the House.
I want to clarify, because there was a statement in the House that there was direction from a standing committee that money be taken out of inclusive schooling, and I just want to clarify that over the course of our budget dialogue and our 16 months in the House, there’s a lot of ways that we got to where we are today and yesterday and where these dollars came from.
On the website for the Department of Executive, there’s a program review office. Under the program review office on the last government, they reviewed a couple of departments, specifically the pupil-teacher ratio as well as the inclusive schooling. They reviewed those programs with the intent of the results coming towards this government so we can make the decisions and choices for the betterment and effectiveness of programs. That’s what the program review office intended to do, review our departments, our programs and see where we can better spend our dollars more efficiently, more effectively. Mr. Speaker, that’s what we did.
On this side of the House, we have a lot of Members who put a lot of time in and know the investments of early childhood development. The Members on this side of the House made a recommendation based on what the program review office had said and had told committee, and what they did in the last government, all the hard work they’ve done.
What good is having a program review office if we don’t act on those recommendations, this government? That’s where we’re looking at spending our dollars more effectively so that other programs and services can actually thrive and flourish, and we can put those other dollars into other programs such as early childhood development.
I did take a little bit of offense yesterday when it was said the direction/recommendations that the million dollars comes out of inclusive schooling was on the direction of standing committee and I don’t believe that’s the case. We did make recommendations on both programs and it was the direction of the Minister to look at possibly taking those dollars from one program. We have to work together to find the best ways to spend these dollars.
I just want to state that it wasn’t standing committee that directed that the one million comes out of inclusive schooling and into ECE. I just wanted to put that on record. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
