Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank the Members for speaking to this point on the motion that was brought forward. I would like to thank the Member, Mr. Bromley, for his continuous support and also the Regular Members as well.
Early childhood learning and provision of quality child care in the NWT, of course, has been at the forefront of our goals and objectives. Healthy, educated people free from poverty is one of the goals of this Assembly and it starts in a child. We have to recognize achieving our goals for our people depends on a strong economy. I’ve heard that from some of the Members here. That helps create a fiscal capacity that we need to provide programs and services that people rely on.
We can’t invest money that we don’t have. The overall pot will shrink if we don’t also take steps to create a strong, diversified economy. This is also a priority identified by this Assembly. This government fully understands that healthy, well-adjusted children become fully functioning and contributing adults, and the experience of a child’s early years affects their entire life. We know that. Through our work in early childhood over the five years, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment alone has invested just under $33.5 million in our young children with the introduction of the Early Childhood Development Framework. Those investments will continue.
Our investment must be strategic, well thought out, bearing in mind our fiscal realities, and we believe – and this has been affirmed by Members of this House many times – that money invested in the early years is money well spent. I share Mr. Bromley’s interest, and Members' as well, to provide quality child care, but before jumping into universal child care as a fix, I would like to share some of the key facts for the Members.
Like Quebec and other provincial and territorial jurisdictions, the GNWT does not build and run child care facilities. Instead our government subsidizes licenced daycare operations, regulates them and, where required, subsidizes low-income parents who act as daycare providers by the private sector.
The Income Assistance program, as Member Bromley alluded to, provides financial support towards the cost of child care for low-income NWT families who are either working or enrolled in school in the NWT. We provide subsidies for licenced child care operators, which creates incentives to run such facilities. We also develop regulations and monitor facilities to ensure that child care facilities are safe and help our children learn and grow in a positive environment.
The reality is, however, that many of our communities do not have child care centres that we can subsidize, as Member Blake alluded to. Eleven communities in the NWT currently have no licenced child care facility. Meaning that at $7 per day, as in Quebec, this will not work for them in the small communities. It should also come as no surprise to these 11 communities, our small communities where no licenced daycares currently exist. The approach taken by Quebec and Scandinavia doesn’t easily translate to the NWT realities. Using Quebec’s approach would potentially exclude one-third of our small communities that have no licenced child care program and where a private sector market for daycare will struggle to emerge.
It is our obligation to find affordable solutions that work for all of our communities. That is why my department has been working on a multi-pronged approach that is flexible enough to meet the unique needs and desires of parents in the small and large communities.
Education, Culture and Employment, along with the Department of Health and Social Services, has done considerable work to study concrete actions that support the Early Childhood Development Framework, as Member Moses identified, as well, with a view of providing access to quality child care as well as empowering parents and caregivers to have tools to be supportive parents. For example, we are looking at ways to empower parents who want to stay at home and take care of their children. Daycare isn’t for everyone, and we must respect that as well. We are also looking at ways to ensure that child care facilities are staffed by qualified workers who earn a reasonable wage. Research also tells us that in many of our communities, schools are not being used at the fullest capacity, having a 60 percent average occupancy rate of the schools in the NWT. This reality becomes an opportunity for use of facilities to meet the community daycare child care needs in all of our communities.
At the end of the day, there is no silver bullet or one-size-fits-all solution for improving child development in the Northwest Territories. What might work in Yellowknife is not automatically appropriate for regional centres or smaller communities. We will continue to implement a flexible, multi-pronged approach to help meet the needs of child care of all NWT communities, families and parents.
Since the motion is direction to the government, Cabinet will abstain from voting. Mahsi.