Mahsi, Madam Speaker. I don’t have the breakdown of how many times we met or how many agencies, but I can provide the breakdown to the Member.
With the proposed funding that’s within the budget, we are allocating upwards of $511,000 towards this wage subsidy. There were suggestions and ideas that came forward and, again, we have to backtrack to the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative, Early Childhood Development Framework, the engagement we have had with the general public, the agencies, the child care workers. They’ve told us their wage is so low, minimum $17,000 to $22,000 a year, so we felt that we needed to follow up on that so that we can have those highly skilled individuals at a going rate today.
So we are following through on what we’ve been told by parents, by our communities and we’re moving forward on that. Mahsi.