Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, colleagues. This motion is giving recommendations to the government to allocate from the resources that are already stated, additional funding to support some of our existing daycare facilities in the Northwest Territories and also assist in creating new daycare facilities in the smaller communities.

As I stated earlier, we have 10 communities without licenced child care services. In these small communities, the employment rate is not very high. Families are struggling with the high cost of living and child care. Young mothers and young fathers are trying to find work, and if they do, they certainly have to deal with the challenge of finding reliable babysitters. Sometimes they have to be left with family relatives to look after the little ones and sometimes those situations don’t always work out well. In these small communities there is certainly a high percentage of young people now having children, which inspires them, motivates them to work and do something with their lives. A lot of the young people want to work and do something with their life. Given the chance and given the support if it’s there, they will certainly make a go of it.

I’ve also experienced, in listening to young people who want to go to the Aurora College learning centres, yet they have problems with babysitters in the morning. Especially in these small communities, work is not on a continuous basis. There’s seasonal work and when there’s work these young people want to work because it’s only three or four months and they want to do something, develop their skills, put their ability to work in good terms so that in the future they’ll be hired again.

These young people need all the support we can give them. If it could be that the department could look within the existing resources to help the ones that now who already have child care services in their communities and also to look at the ones at the communities without licenced child care services in the North here. This is something that we identified in our discussions as communities without some of the services that the other regions

have. It is a high priority. Small communities such as these ones have unique challenges, unique needs. These licenced child care centres do a lot. Even in Norman Wells they just started one up. It was going well. When it shut down, a lot of families were scrambling to find babysitters. Norman Wells has a high rate of people working with a low unemployment rate. The other nine communities are also in the same boat. I just want to raise that. The motion talks about a recommendation to allocate some of the existing funding in this area. Thank you, Mr. Chair.