Thank you, Mr. Chair. In looking at this section under Grants and Contributions, I see that $137.498 million is going for education authority contributions. Now, this isn't a giant increase from the previous year. This is the area I was talking about in my opening remarks or my comments or response to your opening remarks.
I've heard a lot of rumours and rumblings about what's going on in the individual education authorities. A lot of those comments have been
similar to those that we have been hearing out of the health authorities: that the budgets that have been set for this year aren't a significant growth, and as a result they're going to have to do a lot of downsizing or changing how they're delivering programs. Obviously, this doesn't show us any detail, and it doesn't show us the results of the budget for the authorities. So I'll just get to the point. Are these budgets that have been targeted for the authorities going to result in job losses down the road, future reductions, changes to programs, reduction in programs so that the district education authorities can actually continue to fund and operate? Thank you, Mr. Chair.