Yes, Mr. Chairman, with my honourable colleague, Mr. Dent, who was the co-sponsor of this additional resource, of course. If I may qualify, there are some fiscal limitations that I have to operate under and, of course, there is no pot of gold, as we would all like, at the end of the rainbow, Mr. Chairman. There were some limitations to what we have to do and where we had to assign it. We looked very closely at where monies were being spent, what the value of the food basket was in some of the communities. Mr. Dent's department is working to try to make the appropriate adjustments. Based on what I felt we had in the budget, I assigned $1 million to that particular policy initiative with the hope that it would provide some assistance to those most in need. Now, a common concern would be, why did you not provide more? The reality is that, I think I said earlier on, and Mr. Dent said the same thing, in an ideal world we would like to be able to do that, but this is not an ideal world. We are working under still very difficult fiscal conditions. This was a number that we felt we could live with. I felt we could fiscally manage. In some small way both Mr. Dent and myself felt that this would provide some assistance to those most in need, not perfect by any means. Thank you.
John Todd on Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
In the Legislative Assembly on January 28th, 1998. See this statement in context.
Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
January 27th, 1998
Page 386
John Todd Keewatin Central
See context to find out what was said next.