R.J. Simpson

Thank you. Again, I'll bring this back to what I've been saying and what everyone has been saying here, that it would be great if we could increase all of these programs and do all of these things we want to do, but we have to focus on the priorities of the Assembly and the mandate. There are a lot of great ideas and wonderful things that I would like to see done in Income Assistance, but they all cost money, and so I want to temper everyone's expectations. While I am open to discussing everything and changing what we can do, changing our mentality, it all costs money, and so I am not...

Thank you. Could the Member please clarify which page he's on?

Thank you. If you'll indulge me, I will go back to the Member's previous comments about the Early Learning and Child Care Agreement annual report that is done by the department. That was tabled in the last Assembly, the last year of the last Assembly, so that should be readily available. In terms of the Member's present question, yes, we are doing that work of looking at the spaces available; what type of spaces we can use; you know, looking at whether or not we can use government infrastructure, looking at how, in conjunction with the Housing Corporation, homes can be used for spaces. We have...

Thank you. For the 2019-2020 school year as of December 2019, the combined amount received by education authorities in the territory was $15,960,616, and there were 173.26 positions created using that money. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It is territorial.

I am not quite sure what the Member means by "interactive," if that's the people working at the centres or if that is like a touch screen type thing. That would really be up to the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment who runs those. I would definitely encourage it. I know that at the north of 60, for the 60th parallel visitors' centre, when you enter the park, we have the big sign, which is strictly in English, but then, as soon as you enter the park area, the sign includes all the Indigenous languages.

That is distributed to heritage centres outside of Yellowknife. For example, Hay River received $60,000 a year; I believe Norman Wells receives $118,00; Fort Simpson, $55,000; Fort Smith, $198,000; and, actually, the Yellowknife Historical Society received $60,000 of that. Thank you.

Thank you. Right now, the Senior Home Heating Subsidy, I think a lot of people see it as covering 100 percent of the costs. The fact is that it is intended to cover about 74 percent of the average cost of heating a home, an average home, in a particular region; and so each region is different. What we are proposing and what we are going to do is increase that 74 percent to 80 percent. It's not 100 percent, but it is a larger increase.

One of the issues that I find people run into that, you know, this was a cold winter, especially up in the Beaufort-Delta, and seniors, they spend all of their...

Thank you. Currently, the museum is free for everyone. It's by donation. I am sure many people, if not most people, don't donate anything, but as far as the history of those discussions, if you don't mind, I can hand it over to my deputy minister, Ms. Mueller.

Thank you, and I take the Member's point that, in the previous three years, a lot of the work was focused not on necessarily increasing availability and affordability but on shoring up the foundations and using early childcare as a way to educate our youth and to prepare them for school. However, going forward, we are mandated to increase availability and to increase affordability, so we have a number of mandate items directly related to that. In the negotiations of the new agreement, we will be pursuing those as our priorities. Thank you.