Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When I came into this Legislative Assembly, I had a strong background in health and social services and working with youth. Being new to the Assembly and being privy to all the information that Regular Members receive, statistics on where government is, what really grabbed my attention was where our education system is. Although I did have a strong interest in education, all the information that I get as a Regular MLA tells me that the education system is not doing what it’s supposed to be for residents of the Northwest Territories.

Right from the start, from kindergarten, we’re already failing our people of the Northwest Territories, with having up to 60 percent, as my colleague Mr. Bromley stated, of youth entering the kindergarten system developmentally delayed in the small communities. Six out of 10 kids going into kindergarten are not ready, and not ready to handle school at a very young age. Then you go through to Grade 12 where four out of 10 Aboriginal students graduate. Four out of 10. Yet we talked about getting our Aboriginal people into the workforce when they’re not ready.

Right from the start we’re failing them. When they do graduate, they’re not academically ready and the education they have is not sufficient for them to succeed in post-secondary, where often you see some failures or extra years of studies.

Then we go on to adulthood where we have low literacy rates within the NWT and that’s stated in the document. Right from the start, we’re putting our children and youth at risk and we continue this practice throughout their educational lives as we continue to practice social passing. We continue passing our youth and students that are not ready for a higher academic of learning and yet we say here and continue to do it year after year after year.

In the document, it says for decades – decades – Aboriginal leaders across the NWT have been saying we need something that’s concrete that’s going to affect the education of our students and our children. This is Aboriginal leaders. It’s been decades. It’s about time that this government starts to listen. We do have a tabled document, but we must ensure, as Members have said, that it doesn’t get shelved like past documents and that we have to take the first steps and make sure we implement everything that’s in this document, starting with early childhood development and getting them ready for kindergarten. Thank you.