Bob Bromley

Thanks for that information. I’d like to see a distinct proposal come forward to committee and I hope it does.

Moving on, again, the cultural heritage arts organizations and projects, there is a real need for an arts centre – arts, cultural and heritage centre, really – in a number of regions. Certainly in the capital. This is obviously an infrastructure project, but I don’t know that the government would be responsible for a large role in that, but I would see the government playing a role in facilitating an effort by all of the groups and perhaps the community interested in pursuing that...

Mr. Chair, Aurora College obviously is the major player in delivering this. Are there other partners in the delivery of the ALBE? Does the department itself play a role or are there other partners? Thank you.

Thank you. My question was activity three, early childhood community outreach, and the Minister has spoken about activity two. But obviously it would be very disappointing if at the very end of the fiscal year we provided the money for a program and then in a few weeks later discontinued it. That is exactly where government gets its reputation from.

So my question was on the substantial amount of funding on early childhood community outreach. What have we done in this area? Have we extended the money and are we going to bring that forward? Is that in this new budget?

Thanks to the Minister for that information. I know we have done a pretty extensive review ourselves of ALBE through our program review office, and I know, I think maybe the Auditor General may have commented as well. One of the things that is clear is that we spend a lot of money on this, a lot of money on ALBE, and I have to say, I was a little bit surprised when I found out we’re getting a whole bunch more money from CanNor for this. It’s not something I would ever turn down, of course. I’m happy to see it. But one of the issues was we didn’t know what we were achieving with those dollars...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m happy to get on the list again. I didn’t hear the Minister say that that commitment had been fulfilled, that we have actually two fully qualified early childhood development workers looking after children in these communities. Could I still get that confirmed? Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. Just to be clear, we would have both what we’re paying now and what we would be paying if these workers all met federal standards for early childhood workers so that we can compare. That’s probably what the Minister was saying, but I didn’t hear it exactly, so I just want to be sure we’re talking about the same thing.

That’s good to know. Maybe that’s something the department could share with committee at some point just to see what those reports said. I’m glad efficiencies have been found and worked on. I guess I would just ask the Minister to be sure and include that, then, in the education renewal. That’s all I had.

I appreciate that information. Perhaps the Minister could provide, at his convenience, a comparison with the current fiscal year so we know where the changes have been made. More specifically, the House approved $1.25 million in the current fiscal year in addition to what was originally proposed in the mains for this fiscal year. I’m wondering if the Minister will provide an accounting for how that $1.25 million was expended.

Just one more follow-up on the early childhood development worker training at Aurora College and where we might be going with that. Obviously, I think we want our people looking after our children, especially in early childhood where so much is happening, to be fully qualified, and of course, we would need to pay them as such. Now, I’ve heard concerns that we don’t want to train workers because we don’t want to be paying those salaries. This is obviously of great concern to me. I think probably everyone would agree our children are our number one resource here. Could I get the perspective of...

Who does their technical work then? Do they hire their own? How does that work?