R.J. Simpson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the money is rolling out. It is supporting a number of initiatives. Of course, we have the early learning child care diploma program at Aurora College that this money's helping fund. For the first time now that there is a distancebased early learning child care certificate, that people don't have to come to the campus to take. They can take it in their home communities. There's work on dual credit courses for interested secondary senior secondary school students. As well, we are supporting college Nordique to deliver postsecondary programming in French for early...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member stated, I've already said publicly we should have this agreement finalized by the end of the year, in the coming weeks, in the coming week. It's very close. That being said, it's not finalized and so I can't say how many spaces, what costs, etcetera.

If you look at every other deal that's been made, though, there is some indications that there's a reduction in fees at the end of 2022 by a certain amount, and after five years there's a desire to get to around $10 a day average. So there are some things that have appeared in every other agreement. But I can't...

Thank you. I don't have that exact level of detail. The way this funding is often distributed is based on the attendance at a childcare centre. So childcare facilities are funded per child and different rates for different ages, and there's also funding for starting up childcare centres. There's funding for enhancing safety aspects of childcare centres. There's all sorts of different funding that can be accessed, and it's not distributed necessarily by region. It's distributed according to where it is needed. But we could probably get some sort of a breakdown for the Member. I don't have that...

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I can't give a definitive date. We are approaching this project in a very unique way, and we're working with the community and we are on the community's timeline in many ways. We understand that there needs to be a new school just as they understand there needs to be a school. No one's trying to hold things up. But it's an unpredictable process because we've never been down this path before. So everyone is committed to ensuring we get the work done and get it done in a timely manner, but I don't have a date for the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member mentioned, this is not new ground. Over the years, there's been a number of  much work done on the types of programs and research into the needs of young children and how we can better support them and how we can better support parents with their child care needs. And so this work has been done by the Department of Health, by E, C and E, and the officials at the department have looked at all of this work spanning many years, and as well, they have gone out to have discussions with child care providers, Indigenous governments, and so on. And all of that is...

Thank you, and the issues we have are that we do need the facility, and we need it available at all times. And so it's not it's not a reliable venue to do other things because you never know when you're going to need it and when you're not. And the fixed costs associated with it are there regardless. So it's not something that really can be used in other ways.

And as to the question about, you know, keeping youth out of the facility and helping them down, you know, perhaps a better path, like, that's that's what Health does; that's what ECE does; that's what Housing does that's what we...

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I just did a quick sort of calculation here on Google Maps of what I think the new path right look like, and it looks like it's probably under or somewhere around 200 meters. So we're looking at a couple thousand dollars a meter. I find it difficult, I guess, to support something like this just given that we have a lot of competing needs in the territory, and this is a very short trail to the Legislative Assembly. And I walk that street often. I've been here six years. I've walked it in winter, I've walked it in the summer, and I know that I'm walking on a road and...

Thank you, Madam Chair. There isn't a plan to retire any of the buildings. You know, I do look at these low numbers, and I look that we have some facilities where prisoners could be housed in either one, and perhaps there's opportunities to repurpose some of those facilities. We already have a budget associated with them. We have facilities themselves. But there is nothing in the works. But this is a relatively new phenomenon, these low numbers. I mean, when I took over the portfolio, they weren't this low. And when we got here, they weren't nearly this low. So this huge decline is very, very...

Thank you, Madam Chair. A number of my questions have already been answered so I'll probably keep this pretty short. So the stretch of road we're talking about, there was comments about the safety concerns. How many incidents have occurred on that road where perhaps someone was struck by a vehicle or there was some sort of collision or near misses, if we know of that, in the past, I guess, 25 years that the Assembly has been here? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I believe that the renovations are completed. If not, they are substantially completed and there might be a few little things here and there but I can get confirmation that they're completed? Yes, they're completed. Thank you.