Thank you. I can assure the House that the idea of asking for more money was our first idea. The way the deal was structured, the money is the money. It's the same formula used across Canada and so the federal government is not willing to have a one-off deal with one jurisdiction in Canada and leave all of the other jurisdictions on the same formula. So what needs to happen is this government needs to put more money into early learning and childcare if we want to see more spaces, if we want more professionals recruited and retained in childcare centres. That's the bottom line. I don't think there's any better investment than in early learning and childcare. And I think that it's -- you know, we talk about where we are going to find the money to implement our priorities. Well, I think this should be one of the priorities. I wish I could have gotten the money in the last government as the Minister of ECE. Unfortunately, I took all the money for new initiatives for SFA and income assistance enhancements and there was none left over. So that has been, you know -- this has always been my priority, to get this money in the life -- early in in the life of this Assembly because we need to expand the spaces that we have -- or create more spaces. We have been working with -- we created an infrastructure fund, because in many communities there is no space for a childcare centre. We worked with a number of organizations who have actually built more spaces; however, the number of organizations now who have that capacity has diminished. They've all built their spaces. So we're taking -- the government is now taking a different approach and trying to be more proactive in terms of developing spaces. The federal government has committed more money for infrastructure and so hopefully we're going to be receiving that soon as well. So there are things that we can do, but I think that this is one area where we actually need to step up and do what other jurisdictions are doing, like the Yukon who spends an extra $10 million relative to us. So that's what we need to do. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
R.J. Simpson on Questions by Members
On December 7th, 2023. See this statement in context.
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