Families who registered for the province’s “40-Dollars-a-Day” child care program during the recent teacher’s strike should expect cheques in the mail, soon.
Finance Minister Mike de Jong (pictured) says over 165,000 cheques were sent last week.
“That’s well over half of the 230,000 families that have submitted registration forms,” he says. “We’re well underway and the response has been very positive.”
de Jong says a family with two eligible children can expect to receive over $1,000 non-taxable dollars.
“It’s a significant amount of money … but the inconvenience, the costs, were also significant, but very real, so we feel this is very appropriate,” he says.
In the case of two separated parents disputing over who gets the money; de Jong says the Ministry is doing its best to make sure duplicate cheques aren’t being sent out, relying on info from parents and the Education Ministry.
“Is it going to be perfect? Probably a few issues will arise when you’re dealing with this number of cheques in such short order,” de Jong explains. “We think we have a system in place that will minimize the errors and glitches to the greatest extent possible.”
The “$40 a Day” applies to the first 13 school days of the year that were affected by the teacher’s job action.
Parents can still register to receive the cheques and have until January 31st, 2015.
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