Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have some general comments and I will base them on the Minister’s introductory remarks so it will be easy, hopefully, to follow along.
I do appreciate the work that the department does in the area of culture and heritage, and I’m particularly pleased that our staff have managed to negotiate the $1 million-plus revenue from Nunavut to help with the storage costs for Nunavut-based artifacts. Those are important artifacts. They need to be stored properly and there is a real cost, so I appreciate the department figuring out how to get those covered.
I also appreciate the three new regional Aboriginal language coordinator positions, Fort McPherson, Providence and Deline. Certainly, I know Gwich’in is a language under threat, so these are areas that I’m happy to see some work happening in. I know the Minister is well aware of the language issues in my riding and I’m sure that we’re whittling away on those.
The $7.7 million on early childhood, the Minister knows, again, I fully, 120 percent, support that; $1.4 million more than budgeted in the ’12-13 Main Estimates. I presume that’s the final budget that we passed that we’re talking about there and that this is not the same addition from last year. If that’s so, I think this does meet the Minister’s commitment from last year to recognize that increasing funding in early childhood development will be needed for future years, so I appreciate that completion of his commitment.
Early childhood, you know, there are lots of things to comment on and specifics of what is happening there. I see the distribution of age-appropriate baby bags. I hope that’s not a duplication, because I know there are other agencies distributing those. The child and family resource centre pilots, again, I was very unhappy, and I see this happening with other things, as well, with the timing. We’re leaving these things until the very end of the fiscal year to get going and, of course, then they’re rushed and not effectively done. The Minister did commit with those two child and family resource centres that there would be a PY filled by a fully qualified ECD, so I will be interested in whether that has been
achieved as per the Minister’s commitment for a full-time coordinator.
The bottom of page 3 has included a new child daycare inspection coordinator position. I’m wondering if we need a full-time position on that. Does this require it? How many daycare centres do we have? Is this position actually going to do the inspections or is it to ensure that the inspections are done, in which case I would expect we wouldn’t need a full-time. It’s very critical work but do we need a full-time position there?
Again, looking at the territorial-wide action plan from a broad-based review of the education system, again, I support that. I think there is overwhelming evidence of how early childhood development, which is not necessarily part of the education system but needs to be integrated with it, and some of those features carried on through the early years in our educational system are important to pay attention to in that refocusing. I appreciate the Minister getting started on this broad-based review. The importance of play, for example, and the less importance on homework in those early years. Moving away from a fear-based education system to one that’s clearly focused on the well-being of the child, helping the child to know themselves and discover what their talents and interests are, and helping them to develop those. I’m hoping that we’re going to take advantage of lessons learned in that work.
The Elders in Schools Program. We have heard this before and it didn’t happen. I still am kind of excited to hear it again, so I’m hoping the Minister will, indeed, come through here. I know the Minister, with Health, carried out a lot of consultation on ECD which involved elders, and it seemed like there was a certain amount of wisdom coming out of that. There might be some skill bases that could be tapped into there by the various school authorities. I don’t know what role the Minister might have there but it doesn’t hurt to help contribute that information.
Certainly, there is a great need, as seen by many of my colleagues as well as myself, on the need to improve the delivery of the Inclusive Schooling and how we do that. I am disappointed that we’re just now developing a new data collection system, but on the other hand, I’m glad to see it going ahead and I will be very happy to see that in place this coming fall.
The accountability framework for the education and training of adults in the NWT, again another Auditor General recommendation and discussed quite a bit in our program review office work, so I’ll be happy to see that. Is that ready to put in place? Is it developed and in place, in fact, when we say we’ll introduce it are we talking about spending the year developing it, and maybe at the last few weeks we’ll introduce it to actually put it to work.
Two new positions for the Sahtu. In recognition of what’s happening there, I appreciate the Minister being progressive on that front.
Just flipping through my notes here, I notice on Child Care User Subsidy the number of families accessing the Child Care User Subsidy benefits monthly rose substantially and I know that there were changes made, so I’m wondering what this actually reflects. If I can get that put in plain English. Does this mean that the demand is up, that the need is up, or is that they’ve just recognized that this is a valuable resource they can tap into, sort of, belatedly, and now they’re doing that? If I can get some clarity on that one.
Again, I’m glad to see these new reports, the Student Financial Assistance review and whatnot are coming, and are going to be put on the website, accessible Adult Basic Education review, so I’ll look forward to that. I’m very happy to see the incentives for students in a veterinarian medicine program. I worked closely with the Minister on that for several years and that sounds good to me.
That’s it, Madam Chair. I just do note that the department is increasing 3.6 percent. It’s more than average across departments, but on the other hand, this department, I think, is recognized to be so important that if there is a department that goes over, this is one of them that I think we would generally support. Thank you.