I think there's some inefficiency in process. I was talking about programming too much big money through big partners and offloading liability from government by saying, “Listen, simply re-program the money in April,” because people like you can come back and ask, “How come that money is still not out? How come it's not out to charities?” This is the case in that $350-million grant. One of them is woefully under-subscribed.
One of the partners has come back to us and even said they had received approval on the Red Cross grant; however, they hadn't received the money as of last week, but they're telling them to reapply. If a fund is woefully under-subscribed, it tells you that there's a problem in program design. I think the program design of that was inefficient and improper and hopefully will be changed for the next rollout.
The program design of this bursary program is poorly designed. You have the issue of this $10 an hour bursary thing that concerned us, and we raised our concerns on it. When we wrote to the government, we suggested they try pilots with us. We could put in a few hundred kids across the GTA and get them doing the things that they want, which is packing these food aid kits and getting them out to communities that need them and really provide good value for money.
Respectfully, Charlie, I can make a bag of Saskatchewan-grown green peas for 48¢. You can't buy that in Walmart for less than two dollars, which means every dollar that comes in through us is literally four times the amount in aid going out, and that's really good value for money. If we started small and we put these students in, which is the offering we gave them initially, and certainly the offering that we had with WE, we would at least have these students benefiting and helping us to help other folks. It frustrates me to no end, because I have some young people we've recruited who ask us every day if they're going to get the bursary, and I don't know. I hope the government will honour its commitment.
Sorry, Charlie, I'll just finish up quickly.
I'm still hopeful that you as a committee will help us get this thing kick-started, because I don't want the kids to be the losers. I'm very hopeful that, as a government, we're going to work together to do better and more efficient programming so that we don't waste taxpayer dollars and we get more aid to people who need it.