R.J. Simpson

Thank you. There was no change in the budget. Just the actuals were low that year because it was undersubscribed. Thank you.

Thank you. I don't have a breakdown in front of me of the distribution of these funds, but that's definitely something we can get to Member. We might be able to get it by the end of the day. I know we have people watching and working furiously and sending us emails. We can get that done, and hopefully, I'll be able to have an answer for you later on. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate what the Member is saying. It would be nice if we had the resources to send the team out to the regions on a regular basis, but the fact is, they just don't have the time. We don't have enough people. This is intended to augment what's already going on in the community, not to replace that. It's not the only service that these students would be getting. It's valuable. For the students who need it, it's very, very valuable for the students, the parents, and the teachers. I would love to do what the Member is asking and get them out into the different communities on a...

Thank you. Yes, we are meeting the goal we set out three years ago now. We will be expanding in the coming year to 20 communities. Thank you.

Thank you. To answer the Member for Kam Lake's question, there were 112 graduations at the college. There are also completions, which aren't graduations. I will get those numbers for the Member by tomorrow. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. To my left is Ms. Rita Mueller, the deputy minister of the department; on my right is Mr. Sam Shannon, assistant deputy minister of Corporate Services; on my far right is Mr. John MacDonald, the assistant deputy minister of Education and Culture; and, not sitting with us right now but waiting in the witness room for his time to shine, is Mike Saturnino, the assistant deputy minister of Income Security and Advanced Education, who I will, with your permission, call upon at the appropriate time. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. That would be ideal. That is what we would hope for, that we could have these supports in every community, or every region, at least, but the fact is that it's expensive. The cost of travel would be dwarfed by the cost of having these people in all of these regions. I'm not sure if that answers the question. We would love to, but it's not feasible at this point. Thank you.

Thank you. The way that SFA determines whether or not a school is eligible is based on a master list. You can access it. It's a federal list of accredited universities. It's accessible through the SFA website. If you go on there, you can search for a school and, if it's on that list, then, if it is a program leading to a licence, certificate, diploma, bachelors, masters, et cetera, then it's an eligible school. Thank you.

Thank you. The funding is provided by the federal government, pursuant to an agreement that is ending this month, actually, I guess, March 31, 2020. Initial discussions from what we can tell, it looks like there will likely be a one-year extension of the status quo. After that, or during that time, we will enter into negotiations. We will be looking for more money, obviously. We always do. We still have to figure out what the feds want to do. With the reorganization of federal departments, we're not quite sure what their direction is going to be. What they might like to do is fund directly to...

Thank you. It's on a referral basis, so it's not scheduled visits. It's based on the needs of the community. For some detail, I can go to the deputy minister. Thank you.