Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank Mr. Bromley for bringing this motion here today, and I’d like to thank the seconder, Mr. Yakeleya, for allowing debate. Thank you very much.
I think everyone had a chance to read the Globe and Mail article, and I think that talked about that $7-a-day daycare program in Quebec. I can tell you, it did generate a lot of, I guess, good conversation, even with my spouse. We went back and forth and said what if. What if, back then when our kids were younger, we could have had daycare for $7 a day. And I’ll tell you, it was interesting conversation. We looked back at how many thousands of dollars we spent in daycare, if we could find daycare. That was the question. There was no daycare 20-some years ago. I’m starting to date myself here, but it’s unfortunate that’s the case. I for one am very, very curious as to where this motion will take us. Really, what it does is take us on a road of let’s just look at it. Let’s just do a study. I know I’m not a big fan of studies, but this study I’m going to let slide and say I like this study because it opens up a whole new realm of looking at things.
We do some great things here in our government – we all know that – and I think we’ve got to pay some credence to some of the great stuff that we do. I don’t want to overcloud that issue, but we need to take a look at what this study means financially. That’s where I’m really coming from with the support of this. We’ve got to take a look at what will it cost us, because the models that we’re comparing are large markets. Quebec, Scandinavian countries, those are fairly large, I guess, population bases. We’ve got a small
population base. I really want to see what this study will do to shed a light on what does it mean for us in the Northwest Territories, and for that, I will be supporting that motion to see what the financial implications will be.