Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the honourable Charles Dent, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. It is on the subject of day care. I am going to wade in on this one. Hay River lost our day care, some time ago, when there was a proponent there facing similar circumstances as what Fort Smith is facing now. Mr. Speaker, I want to say that after the Minister's trip to Ottawa to work on Mr. Dryden on the subject of per capita funding, he follows a well-beaten trail on that topic, so the fact that he didn't come back with a whole pile of money isn't all that amazing to me.
I know a little about day care. Twenty-six years ago, I built a beautiful new day care in Hay River. As a matter of fact, I take some pride in the fact that I was the one who came and lobbied this government, 26 years ago, to put legislation in place so that day cares would be regulated.
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The Minister of the day was from Fort Smith, Arnold McCallum. Anyway, I don't think we are going to get pots of money to address the day care situation. I think we need to become more resourceful. I think we are going about it in the wrong way. I think we need to identify underutilized facilities in the communities, such as schools that are not being completely utilized and have less student population and are absorbing the entire amount of space. We have to find a different way to fund day care. I think that for income support to fund the parents and expect that they are going to pay the day care, and keep it going, is an unrealistic expectation. Has the Minister ever considered funding the day cares directly with the money for day care, as opposed to through the clients? Thank you.