Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to follow up a little bit, significant dollars were committed to early childhood community outreach in response to the priorities raised in the House. I’m wondering if we can get some kind of report as to how those dollars have been spent. Will they be fully expended this fiscal year and fully renewed for the next in this budget? Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I move that we report progress.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to follow up a little bit on the adult learning and basic education programs, and I have got some information from the Minister recently which I appreciated. Can the Minister summarize what the plans are for this year with the CanNor dollars? Is that a matching funding? Is that something we match or are we able to use those dollars exclusively on their own for this ALBE initiative?

Thanks to the Minister for that breakdown. I have some of that information. What I would be interested in, in particular, is how the expenditures have varied from what was planned at the beginning of the fiscal year, so I would appreciate that. I know the Minister made a commitment to have a fully qualified – which I assume means meeting the federal standards – early childhood worker employed at each of the two child and family resource centres. Could I just confirm that those fully qualified people are employed in those programs as per that commitment?

Thanks to the Minister. I wonder if the Minister would commit, just so we know what we’re talking about, if the Minister would commit to developing a briefing note, an information package on what we’re talking about here. If we were to upgrade all of our early childhood workers and their salaries, what would be the cost, in terms of the salaries, salary difference across the government for early childhood workers, just so we know what we’re dealing with and if we need to plan for it. I think that’s a good starting point. That would be great.

I think I’m understanding the system now. I don’t have the expertise to criticize or critique it. I guess I would ask if that is the most efficient, having TSC look after our GNWT throughout our communities, and now slowly adding all the health authorities, but having our education authorities contract their own separate maintenance system. Is there an opportunity for an efficiency there, or is that something the Minister would look at?

That’s all I was looking for, that we are looking into that seriously, so thank you for that.

Early Childhood Development Program, I see, is $7.7 million. Could we get a brief outline of how those dollars will be allocated and, if it’s possible, a comparison to the current fiscal year? That’s the $7.719 million under program delivery details and there were categories such as family centres and Aurora College training programs and so on that were used in the current fiscal year.

Thanks for the Minister’s commitment there. I know the Minister is aware, just from listening in the House, that there are many millions of dollars now just from the GNWT being spent in this area. It is a big project in Simpson, of course, but many other projects such as Diavik’s wind project and many community projects, and our new goal of getting 20 percent of all our thermal communities on solar or deriving their electricity from solar, biomass projects coming on stream quite commonly. Of course, the expertise is coming from the South. That’s the sad thing to me.

We’ve been talking about...

That’s news to me. I didn’t hear that discussed earlier when it was up. I appreciate that information. As I understand it, our education authorities do use our TSC programming but it’s done in a separate way. But they are integrated across authorities, so we just provide funding to them. Do they get chargebacks on their own? Would it show up in their budget, TSC chargebacks?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to start with the early childhood development aspects here. First of all, I note that early childhood and school services division is the title. Could I first learn, is early childhood development programs within that division, or does the early childhood just refer to preschool programs aspect?