Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the Member for the question. I have two small children, a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old, so daycare is very much a part of my life. And I understand the challenges that a lot of families are going through. I had -- our day home closed last year unexpectedly, and we nearly had to take my wife or I out of the workforce to care for children. Luckily it worked out. But that's something that affects far too many parents. And I understand that struggle. But I also understand how important $10-a-day daycare is. That was a life -- a game changer for our family and for many families in the Northwest Territories. But what we've set up is not sustainable and we know that because daycare, the daycare associations, the daycare providers, are telling us that. So we need to do -- we need to renegotiate that bilateral. It's not a -- that's not a nice to have or it would be great to do this. It's something that has to happen if we're going to maintain the spaces that parents depend on and so we can keep them in the workforce and keep their cost of living low. That means going to Ottawa and having that discussion and finding -- and looking internally to see why didn't we make that ask in the first place, because I'm sure they're going to say well, you signed it, what's going on here. And that's going to take a bit of time, but I think that should be part of the first discussions we have with the Prime Minister when we take the Indigenous leaders to Ottawa as well. And I think when it comes to this, though, it's so important we can't just afford to wait for Ottawa to open the cheque book. We need to make these resources available as well. And we need to do it quickly, so we don't hit this crunch that we're being told about. I think we've all gotten correspondence that on April 1st we might see a complete collapse of our daycare industry. So this cannot happen. We need to provide the funding until we can fix the bilateral agreement. But that is a priority for me, and it's a priority for parents across the Northwest Territories. And I understand your struggle, and I'm going to do my part regardless of what role I play in the House to make sure we have sustainable, affordable daycare for generations to come. Thank you.
Kieron Testart on Questions by Members
On December 7th, 2023. See this statement in context.
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