Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m happy to have this opportunity to offer some general comments in response to the Minister’s opening remarks. I want to start by saying the budget is very tight here for this department and a 1 percent increase, this is a major priority for myself and my colleagues. That is a pretty modest increase compared to the demands that we have.
I also agree with the Minister’s remarks on the arts and culture and heritage, and fully recognize the importance of those to both our identity and strengthening our people and also to diversifying and supporting our economy. Those need to be recognized when we’re allocating funds.
I’m glad to see we’re going to recover the fire damage on the culture and heritage centre, and I want to note that the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre is a top-class facility in any forum anywhere in the world and they just celebrated their one millionth visitor. I’d be very curious to know what proportion of visitors to the capital visit our heritage centre. Perhaps the Minister knows that, I don’t know, but this is a major tourism draw and needs to be recognized on that front as well.
The official languages, again I see, you know, a massive review was done by committee and recommendations made. The budget has stayed the same and yet some of our languages are not doing well. So there’s clearly some focus required there.
Probably my most important comment is in the area of early childhood development, which I’ve spoken
on before, but I take exception to the Minister’s statement that ensuring the success of all students of our kindergarten to Grade 12 education system is a cornerstone of building a strong and sustainable future for our territory. I think that statement reflects a lack of realization and basically a struggle to retain control in the department, really, by the schools. The biggest cornerstone we have is early childhood development and the biggest part of that is the first three years of life and the gestation period during the prenatal stage. That is an area that is really the purview of Health and Social Services and needs to be recognized, and I think is being recognized by this department. They need to be the lead in that area, although ECE is the overall lead in developing early childhood development, but this needs to be sorted out and it needs to be clear.
I’m extremely disappointed that we’re stuck at $7.3 million, which is no change in funding for early childhood, and in fact it’s a decrease if anything. So extremely disappointed and I think we’re missing the boat here and I will be asking questions on that further.
I’m glad to see that an Early Childhood Action Plan will be finalized. I can only hope that Health and Social Services have had a strong input into that, especially for the zero to three where they would be the lead in designing programs.
We don’t need a renewed Early Childhood Development Framework for Action; we need a revised Early Childhood Development Framework for Action. I’m hoping that is what the Minister means with that statement. As I say, those are the most critical parts that I see for this department.
I didn’t hear the Minister talk about training. Again, especially for the early years, we know that our training is producing substandard early childhood workers. We know that Aurora College is producing graduates that don’t meet the national standards. These are the people we’re putting in charge of the most critical years of our children’s and citizens’ lives. I want to hear from this Minister that that program is being tuned up and improved to meet national standards, as committee has talked about for years now.
Again, what’s contained in the Minister’s remarks shows in this area again a school’s perspective, the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative, with a focus on early childhood development. Those programs are already in place and ongoing. They can always benefit from extra support, but again it’s a school’s perspective and it fails to show the recognition of what is now widely understood, that we need a health and social services focus brought into the early years of early childhood development as the priority. That is where we have not been delivering.
I’ll leave it at that. I’m glad to see the other remarks that the Minister made. He mentioned that actions or recommendations from the Student Financial Assistance Program review, I still haven’t seen that. I have again been waiting for that. It seems strange to be talking about acting on that. If there is such a report I’ll look forward to seeing it. Happy to see the Social Assistance Appeals Committee being put in place.