Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member for her question and the event that she organized and the hand-off of the Christmas present, which is work by the organizations around the Anti-Poverty Strategy. When this issue first came up prior to Christmas, I became aware of what was being done and at that time asked the folks in the Department of Executive to start to begin to look at how we could try to address this issue. Now, with this package, and as I’ve talked with my Cabinet colleagues, we’re going to officially put it in the system with this information.
As we were at the presentation this afternoon, as it was highlighted, the effort is to be a part of the solution through these organizations and looking at the dollars we have put available as a government over a number of departments. We know that through a number of initiatives through our budget exercise, we’ve put in the area of about $145 million as a government. But through a number of departments and programs, coordination and working together is going to be important as we try to stretch our resources to better serve the people that are in need of these services. I will formally put it in the system, as we say, to the Ministers and start pulling that information together and prepare
to open a dialogue with Members and the organizations in seeing how we can better pool our resources to have a better impact on the lives of the people who are in the most need.