Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to committee for putting forward this motion. The particular pilots that were mentioned are actually pilots that are being run by the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, but recognizing that there’s a lot of similarity in some of the things that we’re trying to do with respect to early childhood development and the communities. We do have our Healthy Family programs, and we do have those currently in 15 communities throughout the Northwest Territories, and some of those communities are providing supports to other communities. We have put money in the budget this year to enhance and provide some stabilization funding for those Healthy Family programs so that we can continue to be effective, but until we finish those pilots and we have an idea of what those programs are doing, it might be premature to identify a $1.2 million ask in this particular area. Also, we have a fiscal strategy and we do have some limited funds moving forward and we have to find $30 million over the next two budgets in order to continue to meet our fiscal framework, so there are certainly some challenges.

With respect to the second part of the budget, absolutely, the two departments need to continue to work together, and we will continue to work together. There is clearly some overlap around the

early childhood development and we are partnering significantly in moving forward on the ECD.

We will not be supporting this motion at this time even though we will continue to do the second part of this motion.