Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I chose not to do the preamble on that, but I should just explain what I am trying to say. There is so much need for children this age all over the North and for the money that we spend, there is so much inconsistency and discrepancy in what is available in each community for the early childhood education at this level; preschool, pre-kindergarten. We need to come up with a system where every community has some kind of a place available for the preschool children. I would really like to see some consistent application of what we have and I don't think we should just...The funding that might be available from the federal government is one thing, but that is an ongoing exercise on its own. It went on and on last time and it may go on again this time, but I think what I would like to see is us, within this Legislature and this jurisdiction, trying to figure out what the needs are, what is available now and what can we change to see that even if some programs have to be downgraded, if it means upgrading some programs in other communities, so that we can say, looking at it that in our communities, there is some kind of a standard for the preschool age kids where they can have a leg up and everybody could be exposed to some sort of preschool education program that everybody has a place that they could go to if they need to. We should include the funding in there for some kind of a physical place where the kids could go. We shouldn't have a situation like Lutselk'e where the children are having to be in an adult gym and move in and out of there. There are situations all over Yellowknife where there is a lack of consistency as to what is available where.
I think it's time that we look at a very comprehensive strategy, even if we can't meet them all. At least we get a picture of what we want to accomplish as a society for the preschool kids. I believe our territory has such high needs for those aged kids and we should make that a priority. We should state, as a stated goal, that we want to intervene at a very early stage, so that our children preschool age could have an early start in life. I think our size might be small enough that we should be able to identify all the kids at that level and see what we can do, whether it be to get included with the school. I mean, every community has a school. If it's a policy statement that we want to build in, with every school in town will
serve as our preschool, early childhood support service place, I think that would be a good start.
I know that the Social Programs committee has allocated I think the end of March, and we're fastly booking all the briefings. But it would be really good to have this kind of discussion at the end of March. Thank you.
