Yes, Mr. Chair, I do have witnesses.

Does committee agree we can bring witnesses in the House?

Sergeant-at-Arms, if you could please escort our witnesses in.

Again, Minister Lafferty, if you can introduce your witnesses to the House,

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. I have to my left, Dana Heide. He is the associate deputy minister with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. We have Tammy Allison, who is the coordinator of capital planning within ECE. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Thank you, Ms. Allison and Mr. Heide, for returning here. Again, we will go to Member Yakeleya. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to say again that the needs in this department, with regard to the infrastructure needs…and certainly being reminded by the Minister of Finance as to the amount of funding we have, and putting the funding where it makes sense and it makes a good business case. I just want to remind the Minister and his officials here of the support that is going to be needed in forthcoming years in the Sahtu region.

I want to ask the Minister in regard to the support for families, single parents. There is a great deal of opportunity coming up in the Sahtu that would greatly appreciate support in the department for early childhood daycare homes. I understand that currently there was one in Norman Wells that closed down, and Norman Wells is a pretty busy place where both parents are working due to the high cost of living in that community, and now they’re going to face more pressure because of the issue of conversion of the energy source they will be needing in that community.

I’m looking at this department in this capital planning process to see where the single parents and the families can get help in the communities in the Sahtu. If there is a plan out there that would look at the Sahtu communities, to look at seeing what type of requirements and criteria are needed to bring in daycare homes for our communities. I stated, sometime in my Member’s statement, that there are employment rates that are quite low in regard to people working in Sahtu communities other than Norman Wells, and that there is a high percentage of families that are headed by single parents. Even in Norman Wells both parents are

working to support their homes and there is really no support for them in regard to daycare types of programs and homes. So I’m hoping that the Minister would bring forth a type of plan in terms of partnerships, where we could have daycare homes in our communities. That’s one point.

The second point, and my last point, is looking for this government here to look at the emerging need of a Sahtu technical institute. Start planning for our region. Through the combination of various meetings of organizations and this government here, I believe that a small Sahtu technical institute can be established within the life of this government, and that we can see where our people could take some additional specialized training, or just general training in heavy equipment mechanics trade that is going to match the needs of the oil and gas companies that are coming into the Sahtu, or the supporting services. These companies have to support the oil and gas industry and also support the communities in electrical, plumbing, pipefitters or painters, so we need to start building that type of infrastructure.

It would be good to hear from this government that this department will look at some of this much needed infrastructure that could happen in the Sahtu. For the last 10 years we have received some of the infrastructure, but also in the last 10 years we have sort of seen a – I’m not too sure how to call it – a zigzag in terms of infrastructure. Today we know that we’re very early in the stages of developing the Sahtu, and that’s all because of the oil and gas exploration and the potential that could be there to develop it further into something that is quite astounding in regard to taking the oil out of the Sahtu.

I’d like to ask the Minister what infrastructure phases that he can start in regard to building these types of buildings or places in our region. In the past we didn’t have that, and that was understandable, but today it’s a different story. When you have 11 parcels that are taken up and over $600 million committed just for the exploration, that tells you that there’s something happening there. When you have one company spend over $40 million on an all-weather road out in the bush, that tells you that there’s something going on there, and so I hope that is some strong indication to what potentially could happen in the Sahtu. That’s what I’m looking forward to in this infrastructure budget with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment.

I’ll leave it at that there and hope that the Minister would come forward in the future, within the life of this government, to demonstrate that yes, he’s heard us and is working towards it within our cycle and our plan. We don’t have much time left in this government here to see any type of really significant changes. I’m hoping for these two; that

would mean a lot for the people of the Sahtu. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Definitely, by all means we will be through standing committee and also the capital planning process with all of these requests from MLAs and this will be one of them.

The Sahtu region is going to be very busy, as we know. We are closely monitoring their situation. We’re working very closely with the leadership. They were here today, as well, touring the Legislative Assembly. They had various meetings and I did have a chat with them as well. They want to have future meetings regarding various initiatives that are happening in the Sahtu region.

The child care in Norman Wells is an area that we can certainly re-evaluate the situation. I agree with the Member that we need to encourage the community members to access the workforce environment. We must encourage them by all means.

Again, the Member alluded to partnership. Definitely this is an area I am always interested in, having an open dialogue with the leadership, with the MLA, how best to serve the constituency of the Sahtu region and, more specifically, if it happens to be Norman Wells, how can we make this work. Let’s find a solution. I am more open to that. These are some of the challenges we are faced with and I believe it creates more opportunities for us.

Child care and training institutes also go hand in hand. I have talked to it yesterday already, that we are working with regional training committee members that involve industries and other stakeholders from the region. They have developed and produced a community needs assessment and we need to work with that. That will capture the daycare as well. From that, we need to put it forward as part of the capital planning process for next year or the following year, as the Member has alluded to, and we need to build on that.

Training needs to be looked into by the committee. We obviously will need to build on this. I agree with the Member that this is an area that we need to push forward. We are very closely monitoring it as well. Mahsi, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Committee, again, we are on 8-7. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to follow up on a conversation here and conversations earlier today on child care spaces and what facilities we are putting in place.

First of all, how many child care spaces or facilities do we have in the Northwest Territories? What is

the capacity of our child care facilities across the Northwest Territories?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. For that we’ll go to Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Just going through these binders that we have, we don’t have the specific daycare establishments or the actual numbers, but we can provide that to Members.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. I’m sure Members will appreciate that. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. If we could, at the same time, provide that by community, the number of new spaces and the affordability of those child care spaces, that would be appreciated.

What is in the budget for new child care spaces and facilities this time around here? Thank you.

Mr. Chair, as outlined in the description, we don’t necessarily have it in the capital plan at this point, but we are discussing it through the Early Childhood Development Framework and whether it is the next year or the following year. As Member Yakeleya also alluded to the interest and the need in his region, we need to identify what is required in all the regions and what is existing right now, and we will be providing that to Members. At this point, when we look at capital infrastructure, we don’t have a set of capital infrastructure pertaining to the daycare. Mahsi.

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. As well, we can maybe get a commitment to Mr. Bromley regarding the affordability and daycare facilities by community, as requested. Mr. Lafferty.

Yes, Mr. Chair, we will provide that detailed information.

Thanks to the Minister for that. I guess I would appreciate it. I know that discussion with Mr. Yakeleya was interesting and appropriate here. I would like to expand that to the NWT, and obviously I’m very interested in Detah and Ndilo, as well as Yellowknife and so on.

Could we also get what the plan is for new child care facilities at the same time when the Minister provides that information? I understand that inspections are on their way now, but as soon as that’s available, if we can get the plan perhaps brought to committee or some sort of commitment there in the near future. Obviously, the life of this Assembly is on the wane here now and we want to get some of these things done. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, we will provide the recent and most detailed information on the child care facilities at the present time and also

what our plan is as we move forward, the short-term and long-term plans as well. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Committee, we are on 8-7, Education, Culture and Employment, activity summary, education and culture, infrastructure investment summary, infrastructure investments, $2.986 million. Does committee agree?

If I can get you to return to the department summary, committee. That is on page 8-2, Education, Culture and Employment, department summary, infrastructure investment summary, infrastructure investments, $3.74 million. Does committee agree?