Thank you, Mr. Chair. I always welcome good debate in the House, depending on whatever concern or issue is brought forth. But when you look at the description here, it is to provide funding for electronic tablets to new parents. We’ve had many discussions in this House on many issues and even in committee, and a lot of times what it boils down to, we always talk about the underlying issues of why we’re funding or why program services for certain things, and a lot of times it comes down to parenting skills. How do we get our parents better skilled in terms of providing the right type of parenting to their children?
Most of my life I’ve had the opportunity to work on the front line and work with new parents, and we do get those responsible families that come in and want to learn about how to be a new parent, how to take those programs and services, all the education that’s needed with it, but there’s also a targeted audience in the communities, and we all see it and they’ll continue to possibly have babies and might not be very responsible and yet they still lack some parenting skills. This is an opportunity to change that cycle, especially with young parents that are possibly in high school or just out of high school or college and they need those skills moving forward.
However, moving forward, I do feel that as we develop this program that there are some questions that need to be addressed and that we’re not just handing over the tablets to new parents, but possibly some type of training, some type of monitoring, feedback, follow-up on how these programs are brought forth, the type of parenting skills that are going to be implemented, healthy eating, exercise, languages. If the tablets, obviously, cannot add some new applications on there, add resources, maybe have an icon with emergency resources. We have those books, do you have to see a doctor? We could have information on there where parents could go to reference the book and save hospital visits. Just information, not for the parent to be a healthy parent, it’s an opportunity to have information at
home at the tip of your fingers without having to make phone calls, exhaust the health centres, exhaust the RCMP.
It’s a great opportunity, but as I said, we’ve got to make sure that we’re not just handing over the iPads, the tablets. However, there is potential for backfire such as visiting extra Internet sites, who knows? You might give it to a family; they take it on their own and sell it. So you’ve got to have things in place to make sure those things don’t happen.
I do agree with Mr. Bromley on screen time. I’ve done a lot of work in terms of physical activity, especially in youth and the high obesity rates and I think we’ll see some of those results with instruments, but it’s not just tablets, it’s TVs, it’s videogames, it’s movies, a lot of things outside of the tablets here. I think we do need to think in a more innovative way. The Internet is good. There’s a program that was just on the Nature of Things, David Suzuki, actually it was CBC National, it was a thing called the Khan Academy where they took education that was very difficult to learn and they taught individuals, they brought it down to simpler form so students that were getting academic education actually learned a lot better. Like I said, we could put applications on there for English, but also for all the Aboriginal languages that we are losing. Early childhood development, we have seen everything where the brain develops. If we had a parent and the infant learn at the same rate and we can start revitalizing our Aboriginal languages again.
We are going through the Education Renewal Initiative. We are promoting e-learning, and all these things are done through tablets and through screen time as well. There are some challenges that we have. The Minister mentioned we are going through a new funding formula for our schools and our authorities. The current funding formula we have right now, perhaps some schools might be getting the short end of the stick, so maybe that’s where we look at as a priority, look at some of the schools that might need this more than others, or look at where our EDI results are coming with the highest need for intervention to get this education addressed.
Coming from Inuvik, we are a regional centre. A lot of our NGOs and sometimes the schools do rely heavily on donations, donations in-kind and they do succeed and they do work that way. Coming down to Yellowknife for sporting events or actually being able to learn and take on new programs can be done without the help of some of our industry providers in Inuvik and possibly elsewhere.
Obviously, I can’t support the motion that Mr. Bromley did bring forward. There are a lot of challenges that we have in the North, and there are a lot of opportunities that we can use with this type
of program and being innovative and unique in getting our small schools educated.
As I said, just on the news yesterday, we are implementing this e-learning program into the Deh Cho and the Tlicho region, I think. So we are going to be hitting these small schools, and this is a great opportunity to use this. We should be thanking and taking every opportunity that we can have to look at the successes that we have and build partnerships with our partners in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chair.