Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The funding for the Seniors' Home Heating Subsidy was actually reviewed last year, and we made some changes. We found that there was no consistency across the board, so we looked at the ridings. We tried to do it based on the market baskets in other departments. It did change some of the zones in the communities. Some of the communities actually got more money, and some actually got a little bit less because, in my opinion, it is a lot more expensive to provide home heating fuel in Tsiigehtchic than it is in Hay River. That is my personal opinion. I would have to have...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I think that we do need to look at our arts community. It is another diversification of the economy. It is something that I think we need to support. We are just finalizing the Arts Strategy, which will be provided. It is just going through Cabinet and will be going to standing committee. Then, after that, we are developing an action plan. Within that action plan, we will identify increases as needed. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The part-time position would be mostly providing support to the licensed daycare centres and family homes currently in place. The regional coordinator's job, and that has been my direction, is the job to get into the communities that aren't there and to try to do education, public forums, to talk about the services that we have. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Absolutely right. When we were looking at funding, I wasn't the Minister then. I am guessing that it was told that you need to find some savings, and Aurora College came and said, "These are the programs that we are getting rid of because they are not cost-effective." It was not ECE. It was Aurora College that originally said that they are not cost-effective.

In the meantime, they are doing a review. I am not sure who did that review. I am not sure if it was the administration that approved that review, because, at the time that it came out, the person who was in charge of...

When I first took over Education, I was shocked that we didn't even offer the upper-level courses in all of the small communities. I was naive and made an assumption that education was accessible to all. I have since learned that that is not so.

At this point, we are just trying to get the Northern Distance Learning into all of the small communities. With the adding of the four that are coming up now, that will bring it up to 15. Those are for the upper level. Those are the grades that people cannot access right now, currently, in their communities, although we still have issues with other ones...

Thank you. No, that isn't correct. This money is negotiated in the agreement, the collective agreement, but we also provide additional training. We provide training on self-regulation. We provide training on the Indigenizing education. We provide training wherever possible. Training is critical, and it's something that Education takes seriously. It's not something that we just dump on the Association of Teachers and not provide anymore. This is in their collective agreement, and then we provide training as appropriate to the needs of initiatives that we're bringing forward. Thank you, Mr...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's really hard to work off of an example, but the key that I heard there is that the person does not want to apply for SFA. Income support is not meant to be an option. It is meant to meet your basic needs when there are no options. The first priority would be to talk to that individual and say, "Do you qualify?" Like, "Why aren't you getting SFA?" The whole goal of income support isn't so that people can just sit home and collect a cheque. That is not the goal. It is, when people have no other resources, that is when we step in. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do agree that we need to support anyone who actually looks at taking courses in Indigenous languages. Thanks to the federal funding, we have changed our courses that are available right now at Aurora College. It used to be a certificate program in language revitalization, and now we have bumped it up to actually being a degree program. Oh, it's still a certificate.

The other thing that we have is we have expanded our scholarships to provide for students [microphone turned off]...program. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This position is part-time, but we do have the regional early childhood development coordinators who actually provide the support necessary to the region, as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. "Autonomous," I'm not going to look it up in a dictionary. Maybe my staff. If you really want that, I can get it to you. The reality is that we provide Aurora College $32 million in a contribution agreement. When we did the review, the review stated out very clearly that they felt that Education, Culture and Employment was too entrenched in the college, and it said they need to be arm's length. They need to have their own autonomy to find what they want, grow up.

The government response came back and said that we will be; Education, Culture and Employment will take it over...