I’ll be very brief here. I know the Minister’s been listening to all the comments made from this side of the House, and he’s anxious to respond and say yes to all of our asks, so I won’t take up too much time.
The thing I’ve noticed with this budget — and we talk about a budget of reduction — is the word “increase.” I’ve said that with a couple of other departments, and I will continue to have that view as we’re going through the budget process with the different departments. This is one that is a very important department, because it is the Education department. So with that I can probably see a slight increase. I’ve had an issue with budgets coming before us with the word “increase.”
The one thing that I would like to comment on is early childhood development. The Minister is well aware of the Children First Society in Inuvik continuing to try to get an early childhood facility. Studies and research have proved that if you can catch them at an early age, you have a better chance of developing them and getting through the system and teaching them. That is their idea, and that’s what they want to do.
They’re having an awfully difficult time of it, though. They at first asked for some money to help with the facility, and it was just “No, no, no” to everything. All they’re asking for is just a piece of property to put this building on that they’re going to raise the funds
for themselves. Even at that, they seem to be running into one roadblock after another. We talk about early childhood being important. These are folks that are not just talking about it. They’re trying to do something about it, and it just seems that they run into “no” all the time. We don’t want to have them lose interest in trying to push their project forward. They’re not asking for $20 million or $30 million from the government to put their project up. All they’re asking for is the donation of a piece of property. I think that’s something this department should seriously look at. We can drop millions of dollars on correctional facilities — just bang, like that — and here these people are trying to do something to educate the children when they first get them, and have them go through the system and not have to become wards of the state or clients of a correctional facility.
I think this would go a long way, and I still will continue to push that, as they are pushing it. We’ve had some meetings with the Minister, and it seems like we try to make some progress, but then we’re right back at square one. So that’s one of my big concerns.
Another one is the training dollars. Sometimes there’s just so many different programs out there you almost get dizzy trying to figure out what’s what and where to go and how to access money. You’ve got ten people administering a program that only one or two should be able to do. I have a concern with that. But the training part of it…. The Mobile Trades Unit in Inuvik, I think, was a good investment. It’ll be seen in a few years how much came out of it, but I think for now it was a good investment. It was in partnership — like the Minister likes to mention — with some of the different aboriginal groups. CIBC was actually a partner; the Inuvaluit, the Gwich’in, and some stakeholders in industry were partners with that.
So I’m looking for some positive things coming out of that, because you well know that trades, as a couple of Members have mentioned, are in high demand. The more we can encourage people — youth — to get into the trades…. Not just youth, I’ve seen 40- and 44-year-old apprentices still coming out with their journeymen certificates. Years ago Public Works used to have apprentices. We had a huge maintenance shop. We had 30 to 40 people, 30 to 40 trades and apprentices, and seven or eight alone just in the carpenter shop. The way they offer it now is good, as they get out and do some actual hands-on training. We did have a lot of apprentices, for instance, in the carpenter shop. We didn’t have as much hands-on experience as I would have liked, but there isn’t a door knob in the world that I can’t fix, because we did a lot of door knobs.
Interjection.