R.J. Simpson

Thank you. You know, there were numbers batted around in previous years. There was not a number that I felt that I would be able to put forward given our fiscal constraints so instead what we did is we looked at revamping the income assistance program, creating a new program for seniors and persons with disability that is really much more like a guaranteed basic income because those individuals will only have to apply once a year and not report their income monthly. So I can leave it at that. Thank you.

Thank you. So the budget is here, and it is decreasing because this education renewal and innovation was a fund used to try different things, to try to renew and innovate. And so a number of those projects have become permanent, and now they have funding elsewhere. So things like northern distance learning, that's no longer funded out of here; that has its own pot of money. So as they move from being sort of experiments, they move into getting their own permanent streams of funding and that's why we see this dwindling. And this was also a tenyear strategy I guess, and we're must be in the...

Thank you. The role of ECE is providing some expertise when it comes to the value of the pieces, perhaps even the handling of some of them. If it's discovered that this, you know, object in this office should be in a climate control facility, but we what we've discovered is that the GNWT's existing sort of inventory management software and I'm going to have to hand it to someone else to get into the details and provide exact names, but that can handle the inventory of the art. And so I believe that that work has begun. But I can hand it to Mr. MacDonald for more detail. Thank you.

Thank you. And yes, I know my last answer might not have been perhaps as serious as the Member was looking for. But that's what we are doing. We looked at every benefit that we wanted to offer and we costed those out based on the historical realities. We looked we removed a number of barriers as well. And so, you know, income assistance clients won't be cut off for certain things anymore. And there is a cost attached to that as well. So we did look at those costs and we factored those in. We looked at the exempting all of these, say the IBA payments, things like that, and we costed that out...

Thank you. And going back, you know, we needed to reduce fees by 50 percent by the end of 2022. I wanted to get money into families' pockets earlier than that and so I take full responsibility for the quick rollout and the poor relationships. Going back I would have not reduced fees so early. It would have you know, we would have we would not have put that money back in parents' pockets but the health of the sector, the longterm health I think is what is of the utmost importance. So, you know, that's you know, that's something that I learned from. Can I one second, please.

And in terms of...

Thank you. And there are funds that are provided to Indigenous governments, both from the federal government through the GNWT and from the GNWT. This funding right here is specific to schools. And the reason it's broken out in its own line item is because we provide the schools with essentially a lump sum of money. We provide the education bodies with a lump sum of money and we say, you spend this however you need to spend this. There's very strings attached. There's two strings that are very attached, though. We say that this portion, you have to spend on Indigenous languages and education...

Thank you. As part of that capital process and doing those renovations, we're tying those things together. So once we begin that work, we will consult with Indigenous governments and make determinations about how to move forward with names and what those names might be. Thank you.

Thank you. The department does have a relationship with the federal government and at officials levels there are always discussions and there's always meetings. There haven't you know, we haven't made a formal request for more money from the federal government for the student financial assistance program. Thank you.

Thank you. So this would be the section, the early learning and child care section. Most of this money flows to the providers. We have a number of programs that support both day homes and day care centres. They're funded on a per child basis. We've increased the funding for staff for day homes. We are working on amending our per child funding as well to ensure that it is more responsive to the needs of child care centres and day homes. I mean, it's a pretty big question. I'll I won't just list all of our programs. I'll hand it back to the Member. Thank you.

Thank you. And I appreciate the Member's comments about the leadership program. And I have spoken with people about programs like that and, you know, what it sort of what happened in the past, why we don't have it, and what we can change to do going forward. So, you know, I'm definitely not opposed to that. It is late in the government, as the Member mentioned. And it is on the department's radar. I think that once we get into our discussions with Indigenous governments about the future of the education system and governance and how it all works, you know, that's one of the areas that could...