Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the Members for highlighting this as one of the priorities of this government.
These 10 communities that the Member is referring to, the one that that has been highlighted, this will obviously provide child care programming into these 10 communities that we currently don’t have any licenced programming, licenced early childhood programming. So we are capturing those 10 communities.
Part of the discussion I’m hearing is that we’re not providing or supporting these daycares in the communities. We are currently providing subsidies to these daycare operators in the Northwest Territories and currently delivering existing funding. I will just capture some of them. It is a start-up contribution, $340 per infant as a start-up cost for these infants for these daycare operators. Operations and maintenance funding is another one. Minor health and safety contribution, up to $10,000 per year that these operators can access. We also cover rent or mortgage up to 25 percent annually. There is also a Small Communities Initiative of $15,000 per year. The list goes on with the subsidies.
My department is willing to work with all the daycare and child care operators. That is what we have done in the past, will continue to provide those supporting mechanisms and we will continue to provide the support.
This is obviously direction to this government and we are currently delivering and providing those support mechanisms in place already and we will be capturing those 10 communities for early child programming. We are currently delivering it, we will be. So, Mr. Chairman, Cabinet colleagues will not be supporting this initiative at this point. Mahsi.