Wendy Bisaro

Thanks, Mr. Chair. So I guess now that I know there is $600,000 that the college is using for early childhood, and I don’t disagree with that, but we’ve got a reserve for the college but is it not okay for a school board to have a reserve and I’m having difficulty with equating those two philosophies.

I wanted to ask the question of the department. I think it was over a year ago now, the federal government made an announcement and there was a large amount of money that was given from the federal government to the college for, I believe, adult education. I would like to know if I could get a bit...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am in support of this motion. I think my comments yesterday indicated that I believe very strongly that we need to put more effort, more consideration, more design into our early childhood development budget. The department is set on implementing junior kindergarten, and that’s fine. It’s a good program. I don’t have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is that we are not putting the same focus on our zero to three children, and we need to put more money into that area. Other Members have spoken to the benefit that we get from focusing on zero to three, so...

So is there money in the supplementary reserve at this time? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think my time is up.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a couple of questions here. I’ll start with the numbers on page 39. There’s been about an $800,000 increase in the budget for Aurora College from this current budget year to…sorry, the academic year to the next academic year. Can I understand what this increased funding is for? Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for that info. I’m struck by the Minister saying that the school boards will be involved. I would hope that in doing any review that there would have been some canvassing of the people that are providing programs and running inclusive schooling. If that hasn’t been done then I have to say I can’t put much credence in the report or the review that is coming forward.

I’d like to ask a question about the amount of school contributions. On page 10-17 if I look at the ‘14-15 Main Estimates it indicates about $131.7 million and yet I go to the next page and education authority...

Thank you to the Minister for that. If you’re talking about this, I guess I’d like to get some sense of where the department is wanting to go on this, and secondly, are you in conversation with the school boards at the same time that you’re discussing it?

Thank you. I guess I would ask the Minister, once they have evaluated these two JK projects that were ongoing in ’13-14 if committee could be apprised of the results of the evaluation. Thank you.

That’s good. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think it belongs here. I wanted to ask the question about legislation. I wanted to say at the outset that I am extremely pleased that we’ve had first reading of the NEBS Act. It’s been a long time coming and I’m really glad that we managed to get that done.

I did want to ask, though, about whether or not there are any plans in the works on the part of the department to make any changes to the Petroleum Tax Act? It’s been mentioned a number of times by a number of Members and I can’t remember all the specific details, but I know that we don’t treat, we don’t tax all of...