R.J. Simpson

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order under Rule 24 (h), making allegations against another Member, a House Officer, a witness, or a member of the public; (i) imputes false or hidden motives to another Member; (j) charges another Member with uttering a deliberate falsehood; and/or (k) uses abusive or insulting language of a nature likely to create disorder. I have waited until today to raise this point of order because I wanted to review Hansard.

Yesterday, during Members' Statements, the Member for Monfwi said while speaking of the Honourable Premier, and I quote from page 14 of the unedited...

Right now, we are in the phase where we are strengthening the foundation of the college, so that type of work, while there have been conversations, we have not aggressively been pursuing that, just because of where we are and that we do not have a regional needs assessment done to know what we are going to look like. We do not have our infrastructure assessment done. It is hard to go out and ask for money for a particular project when we do not have a particular project that we can show. That being said, there are the conversations that the Premier had in her former post, and there are other...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes. That is what we currently believe. However, I have told the House before and the committees before that this isn't necessarily about getting it done as quickly as possible so we can check boxes. It is about doing it right, and if things need to be pushed back by a season because we are not ready to start a capital project or something like that, or the legislation isn't where it should be, and committee might need more time to look at the legislation, I am willing to make those adjustments to timelines, but as it stands, a lot of work has gone into creating a...

Thank you, Madam Chair, and the Premier is absolutely correct that it is too early to say what we are going to be doing at the polytechnic university, but one thing about universities is that they are willing to put on programming. If the government has money and it wants to fund a program that would help increase healthcare professionals, that is something the college would probably gladly do. Those are the kind of opportunities we will have going forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The budgeted amount for the Income Assistance program in 2019-2020 was $32 million. That being said, it's difficult to always estimate exactly how much we'll need, so there have been overruns of about $2 or $3 million every year, so say maybe $35 million would be spent in 2018-2019. Of that, about $6.5 million is for Income Security Program support. The other $27 or $28 million or so goes directly to clients. I'd also like to mention that we also have additional income security programs, such as the Senior Home Heating Subsidy, that also provides some income security...

We have the one program, and not all of the clients have to report monthly. If a client has an income that is steady and doesn't change month to month, or year to year, even, they can be put on a payroll system so that reporting can happen every three months, six months, or 12 months, depending on how stable their income is. While most clients have to report monthly on income, a number of clients don't. Thank you.

That's correct. That $32 million is the budgeted amount. It's likely a couple of million dollars higher in actual payments.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize Mr. Denny Rodgers, the administrator for Aurora College. He is doing a fine job filling in for the board and keeping us all accountable. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The "Develop new mentorship programs to support emerging entrepreneurs" -- sorry, are we talking about the mentorship program or the apprentice? Oh, sorry, that's my mistake. The mentorship program is with ITI. You were right all along, Premier.

There is a distinction between income security programs and Income Assistance programs, and I believe, from earlier conversations with the Member, he wants to know about the Income Assistance program in particular. We have one Income Assistance program, and that program provides financial assistance to residents to assist with their basic and enhanced needs, which include shelter, food, utilities, clothing, childcare, as well as allowances for persons with permanent disabilities, or seniors.