Alfred Moses

We have already started beginning that work on that Small Community Employment Program. We have started a review of the guidelines itself. We want to have a goal, moving forward, of ensuring that the program is accessible, flexible, and is best positioned to support businesses and residents who live in small communities. We are hoping that funding will start flowing once this budget is passed, April 1, 2017. We do expect to have a strategy hopefully by the fall of 2017.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Historically, we have had low graduation rates out of these two programs in particular. The social work program, for the investment that we do put in, we are getting about four graduates that do come out. Then, with the TEP program, for the amount of money that we are putting into that program, we are averaging about seven graduates a year who come out of that program. We feel that investments should be looked at for other programs that will meet other indemand jobs, so we are going to continue with having these two programs in terms of reductions moving forward and...

Yes, we do fund the majority of dollars to Aurora College to run their programs and services. This year alone, we have developed a schedule to have more meetings with the board as well as the president of Aurora College to have that open communication. We have given them mandate letters in terms of the work that we expect to see them do. We are currently working on an accountability framework with Aurora College. Obviously, we want to see how that money is being spent in the contributions that we do give to them.

In terms of thirdparty funding, we do have the Aurora Research Institute, where we...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I mentioned with questions in the House regarding this, students who are entering junior kindergarten will have access to all the supports and resources in the school setting. So at this time, we're just going to continue with the funding for inclusive schooling the way it is, but junior kindergarten students who are in the school system will have access to more resources, more teachers, moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to clarify this, the funding to the libraries is not affected. It is something that some of the operations within our own department, we made those reductions. You can rest assured that the public libraries did not see any funding affected.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We don't know what the full guidelines are on this new pot of funding that we did get that was announced in the Budget Address and we're still working on that as it's a significant increase to the Small Community Employment Program. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As mentioned when Mr. Lovely had explained some of the reductions that were going on this year with the college, those were the ones that were identified, and then for the future years to come. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My deputy minister outlined some of the reductions we are doing this year, and that is all relevant to that reduction in that line item. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As I mentioned, I know the Aurora College does have a good support staff to help their students graduate in whatever program that they are currently enrolled in. We can take a look and see why students weren't graduating from the social work program or the TEP program as well, and what the successes we have down south are in terms of the 19 students who are going to school down south. We can take a look into it, and definitely with the Aurora College strategic plan and review coming into place, or the strategic plan, hopefully we'll have some good outcomes of that and get better supports for...

Thank you. Our legislated PTR for across the territories is 16:1. When we did the 12:1 ratio, it was on funding, but it was also on a school-to-school basis. We do feel that it is sufficient to roll out junior kindergarten as we have in 20 of our communities already. Thank you, Mr. Chair.