Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to get back to my earlier questions about the cost and some of the responses that we are hearing from the Minister. This cost is too high; there is no question about it. This also assumes a 12-month fully functional committee, five fully functional committees from April 1
st
to March 31
st
,
2011-12, at this cost. We heard that, yes, it costs $45,000 to train a child protection worker to switch from a court system to working with a committee. Well, if that is the case, and that probably is the case, then we are training five of them at once in order to set up this committee.
I am still not understanding the half a million dollars worth of training that would be required in order to get these committees running. That is still not
connecting with me. We have $45,000 to train all five of them to come in as a group to work with committees versus courts. Okay, that is good, but the budget is $500,000, so there is quite a discrepancy there.
Again, we also are looking at this budget here in children and family services. We are looking at a 12-month budget again. That is assuming that these committees are not up and running and there is no impact whatsoever. What we are saying is the committee is, if we get these committees up and running at a lesser cost than this and they are functional and they have an impact, which we are suggesting it will have a positive impact on the budget here, we should be able to do it. I don’t know what our next moves will be, but I am really curious about why this number is here. Why would the department present a number to us at, say, a quarter of a million dollars to set up one committee, more importantly, half a million dollars just to train five community protection workers to be able to come out of the court system? That is 125 times five communities, right? I guess it is $625,000 worth of training that the department is proposing in their responses to train five people to work out of the court system into a committee. These are people that are social workers that have the degrees in social work, is my assumption, but the department is suggesting that it is going to cost $625,000 to train these guys as one. That is the most glaring. The rest is not too bad. That is the most glaring one of the costs that were provided.
I would like the Minister just to explain that cost to me in that context, five people, $625,000 worth of training required within this time period in order to get these committees functional. Thank you.