R.J. Simpson

I'd like to recognize my mother Betty Lyons and my sister, and middle child Chelsea Simpson.

Yes, I would.

In favour.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document: Plain Language Summary for Bill 48: Arbitration Act. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I agree, we need to grow our population. We need to increase the number of qualified professionals we have here in the territory. And that is why myself and the Minister of ITI have spoken about the immigration file and how we can better combine our efforts. And perhaps that is looking at amalgamating our resources and using them more efficiently. But there is I can assure the Member that while I can't just say yes to everything that she asked, I can say that this is a we do have a renewed focus on this, and we are moving in the direction that the Member would...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We're not looking to do something like that right now; however, I will say that I have been involved in meetings with all of the ministers of education from across Canada, and we talk about these exact type of things. So I definitely see the value in it.

And I think that as a government, we have to choose what our focuses are, and we can't do everything. We don't invest as much money in immigration as places like the Yukon do. I'm not sure what their budget is, but I know that it is more, and they have more employers, and they can put more emphasis on this.

And so in the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And those conversations have begun. I will say that that the pandemic has done a couple things. It has really shifted the focus from immigration because no one was coming in for a couple years. So there was very limited thought about travel. But it also highlighted the labour shortages that we have here in the territory. And I think it's actually refocused us now on the need to improve our immigration services and increase the number of people settling in the territory, bringing their services here.

And so we are looking at making some changes. The program that the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There have been meetings with all the childcare providers, and they have opportunities to ask those questions. You know, these discussions that we're having are great opportunities for us to find out exactly what the issues are and zero in on those.

And so as, you know, the MLAs have brought additional questions and concerns to me, I bring those to the department, and, in turn, the department then brings finds ways to answer those for the programs.

So the best thing to do for a program is to sit down with their early childhood consultant and go over those numbers. And...

Yes, I would.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We I've stated before that the increase that is laid out in the contribution agreement is 2.3 percent, and if there are legitimate reasons why a business or a childcare centre needs to increase that, we're happy to have those discussions.

I think that a lot of the concerns that we're hearing are increases of 20 or 30 percent from programs that are already at the top end of what is being charged for childcare. So we are accommodating, but we're not accommodating increases that essentially wipe out a reduction in parent fees. Thank you.