One last quote: “To take away the surplus, which, by the way, comes from my tax dollars, is nothing more than blatant theft of the monies that pay for my children’s education and special needs children who have to be accommodated by the school districts by order of Education, Culture and Employment. So not only am I displeased but also very disappointed that our elected officials would attempt to ram this scheme down taxpayers’ throats, most of whom are in the major centres and are the ones being robbed.”

The implementation of junior kindergarten at the expense of the other school grades, kindergarten to Grade 12, needs to be reviewed and reconsidered. I will have questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment later on. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, before we begin today, I too support early childhood education opportunities in every single one of our communities. I also support the immediate need of those 10 communities that desperately need this opportunity. However, we have an Education Minister who would rather wield divisional politics amongst urban versus rural communities. This Minister should be building bridges, not finding ways to burn them down.

I demand the Minister to immediately show this Assembly any degree of opposition of support against any small community when they need their early childhood education needs met. I also demand this Minister to put any single statement before the House that shows that any Yellowknife MLA has ever obstructed any opportunity for these communities, because we too believe their children need good support. I further demand that he recognizes that all Yellowknife MLAs support the principles of early childhood education. It’s time he starts recognizing that and telling the world that this is happening. We’re not against these opportunities; we support them. We want to be part of the solution.

So I ask the Minister to stop discombobulating the issue. He’s the one causing the problem. If the Education Minister became aware of this, maybe now is the appropriate time. He’s Minister of

Education of the whole NWT, not just which communities he feels like it.

All children in Yellowknife matter, their families matter. All NWT children matter, their families matter. Let’s start seeing it from this particular Minister, but no, he’d rather pit school board against school board, child against child. Yellowknife MLAs want to be part of the solution, as I said earlier, but no, instead of holding up the promise of standards of education amongst all the children of the Northwest Territories, he has found a way, as I said earlier, to pit board against board, people against people, students against students.

We need some real hard discussions right now. While Yellowknife school boards are under financial attack, they see what’s coming. The question now starts to arise, maybe we should be discussing we should turn back our school boards under the administration of this Education Minister, because frankly, Yellowknife citizens are already paying territorial taxes and we’re paying local school taxes. He has gagged the superintendents, and maybe our teachers will finally be paid fairly, just like every other NWT teacher. I’ll have questions later today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to seek unanimous consent to go to recognition of visitors in the gallery, item 6 on the Order Paper, please.

---Unanimous consent granted