Mr. Chairman, I cannot disagree with the Minister at all. I do agree that these are important initiatives and I think that they are investments in our future.
However, I guess if we do not have an endless supply of money, we do have to make choices. I would say that we should carefully examine whether or not the further investment in money comes in adult training programs or increasing the funding at the early childhood level or in primary or secondary education. The first twelve years of formal education and before.
We know how much of a payback we can get from an investment in early childhood development. We know that we get savings for government, about seven dollars for every one dollar that is invested in early childhood development.
I am not sure that we get the same level of return from this type of investment. So unless we can afford to do both, I think we have to look at where the balance is. That was the point of my question. I think we may be jumping on this bandwagon with a lot of enthusiasm. I think that is good, but I think we need to examine our priorities.
I think we would be better served by moving some of that $11 million into the early childhood programs or into school programs and taking a look at whether or not, for instance, the pupil-teacher ratio; should it be an average? Or should it be considered, as what we set right now, as an upper limit? Move our targets to bring the pupil-teacher ratio down and put more money into classroom support so that kids have a better chance of success.
That is the purpose for my question. It is not to say that these are not good initiatives. I think they are, but if we can afford to go for $5 million to $8 million to $11 million in this one program, I think that we have to say, at the same time saying, we have no more money for early childhood development or for schools. I think we have to examine our priorities and say maybe there is a saw-off here that we have to make.
That is really what I am hoping we can take a look at, rather than just continuing to look at these initiatives as they come forward.
I do not have a question on that. That is a comment. I am hoping the government will move to reexamine its focus on this and perhaps take a look at increasing the funding in the early childhood or the schools area.
One question I do have, or further question I have on this page, Mr. Chairman. The $225,000 for the Social Agenda Conference; is this the entire cost that we are expecting to see for this conference? If not, could the Minister advise us what the expectation is that the total cost for that conference will be?