R.J. Simpson

Thank you. For the 2019-2020 school year as of December 2019, the combined amount received by education authorities in the territory was $15,960,616, and there were 173.26 positions created using that money. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It is territorial.

Thank you, and thank you to the Member for the comment. With such a large department, with such a large budget, an increase that would be a large percentage in another department might not show up as such a large increase here, but I appreciate the Member's support for education and advancing the priorities of the Assembly. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. No, we haven't done that work. This is particularly a team to support the principals, teachers, program support teachers. It's an interesting thought, and we can look into it, but we haven't done that to date. Thank you.

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...

Thank you. Currently, we do not, and I can't speak for ITI because ITI is also involved in the arts, but that is something that we are looking at with ITI in the development of the new arts strategy. That's something I've always been critical of myself. I appreciate art. I appreciate artists. If we're doing it as an investment in the economy, are we getting a good bang for our buck? We're doing that work to find out. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. No, there is not.

That is correct.

Yes, I do.