R.J. Simpson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And so we are looking to reduce the cost of childcare by 50 percent on average. And so what that average is, is the average of all childcare providers who charge for childcare. So we do not factor in all of the hundreds of childcare spaces that are available free of cost, many provided by Indigenous governments in smaller communities. The average that we're looking to reduce by 50 percent is based only on childcare providers that actually charge money. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I know that ECE, we are not part of this mandate commitment, but humbly, I think that ECE does more for food security than anyone through the income assistance program. We ensure that people can have food on their plates.

To answer the Member's specific questions, inflation, cost of living increases, are not automatically included in income assistance year after year. That is an initiative that the department has to go and seek funding for. It is not something that is done automatically. I don't believe that it's done automatically for most of our programs. But...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, we would never expect anyone to sign a contract that they haven't seen.

There's been a number of meetings between ECE officials and childcare providers, whether that's day home or childcare centres, and there has been a number of documents provided to childcare providers, and those documents contain all of the information that is contained in the actual contribution agreement. It's a contribution agreement, not a contract. So I just wanted to clarify that as well because childcare providers can have contracts with parents, but they would have a contribution...

Thank you, and the Member is correct. He has heard about this many times before. This is in our original mandate, and I have been bringing it up time and time again.

This is separating people who are essentially out of the workforce, people who don't expect to go back into the workforce, from people who are, you know, in and out of the workforce. So income assistance has different types of clients. Some of those clients are ablebody people who are in between jobs who have fallen on hard times and who just need some assistance, and they will be on income support for a short amount of time...

Thank you. I don't think we're going to be doing that at this time. We've seen a reduction in our travel budgets as well as our, you know, contract services are tight, and it is difficult to you know, we have to make some difficult choices. So we have many avenues where we work with Indigenous governments and communities. And you know, we're going to continue to do that in the best way possible. But at this time, I can't commit to something like that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So this is something that is ongoing. There are timelines listed in the mandate, and there's funding flowing every single year to the tune of over $4 million to small communities to create jobs. So hundreds of jobs are created each year, and the communities just need to opt in and they can provide those funds to different organizations within the community, even private businesses, to create jobs. We are working on in the coming fiscal year, those are going to turn into multiyear agreements so that communities can plan so there's some sustainability with those jobs. It's...

Thank you. So the working group has been established. It has come up with some great ideas, doing some great work. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And we know there's issues with the education system along with some student outcomes. But that's just saying we know there's issues isn't enough. We need to target those issues. And in order to target those issues and develop solutions, we need data. And so there has been a shift in the last few years to collect more data and use that in different ways.

As part of our education is very decentralized and so it has made it difficult at times, but there is a lot of work happening. The graduation rate, it's fa more complicated number than I think a lot of people that I...

Thank you. The question of how we're going to afford all this it's a big one. And right now there from what I can tell, many aspects of the college are funded arbitrarily by the GNWT. There hasn't been a there's no formula by which we fund the college. And so one of the key steps that we are taking is developing a formula so we actually know how much things cost and we know how much we should be funding for programs, and we know how much we should be charging students for programs.

Another key aspect is increasing the student body, whether that is students from the territories, students...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So we've done a jurisdictional scan, a literature scan, and the model for a regionalbased support team was developed. Of course, like many things our efforts had gone elsewhere over the past couple of years in the education system. There was a drastic shift in how we do business. We're finally getting back to normal, and next week things are going to look a lot more normal in schools. But that really held us up, and so when you we I guess in the past couple years as well, there's been a greater push towards integrated service delivery approach, and we are looking at...