Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You’ve heard a lot of comments here from my colleagues. You’ve heard them for the last two weeks on junior kindergarten. You’ve seen it in the news reports, we’ve seen it by e-mails and heard it on the radio.

On November 17th this Legislative Assembly

collectively as 19 Members did outline in our priorities that early childhood development was going to be one of our priorities. It took a while to get started, but on May 30, 2012, we passed a motion to get this early childhood development implemented. We’re just over two years now and we’re still waiting to see what initiatives are taken on with the Department of Health and Social Services, Education, Culture and Employment is doing another thing, and that’s implementing the Junior Kindergarten Program. Two years later, we are still finding issues with this, the public is still finding issues with this and we’re at a point where we have to make some big decisions because we

are in June, and in some communities school is going to be starting in August. We’ve got a couple of months to decide how we are going to move on this.

What gets me is in the motion that Mr. Hawkins is bringing forward, he’s asking for new funding for this new Junior Kindergarten Program. It’s kind of baffling because right now we are going through an Education Renewal Initiative and we don’t even know where those dollars are going, which programs are getting what kind of dollars, what programs are going to get cut. It’s really confusing with this department. It’s not only junior kindergarten but early education renewal. Where are the dollars coming from? It’s not even August, September we’re going to have to start making some decisions. Education authorities are going to get their budgets and talk about a school funding formula. There was commitment made in this House that we would change the school funding formula, but how is it going to be divvied up?

Mr. Speaker, what baffles me is that with the pilot reports that we did get, there was no evaluation… I shouldn’t say the reports that we did get, but the pilots that happened, there have been no reporting, there has been no evaluation on those pilots. Actually, I think in one of the communities where the pilot was being run, we heard from one of the staff working in there, she was quoted saying, “I’m an educator, I’m not a babysitter.” A lot of concerns are coming up from that, even with our Beaufort-Delta Education Council sitting down meeting with them. They’ve even expressed concerns, written a letter and I will make some references to what their concerns are.

As I said, there has been no evaluation, no report on the pilots that have already been done and yet this fall we are going to implement them in 23 communities. Mr. Bromley made a good suggestion in question period about how maybe we could just focus on some of the small communities that need it and leave the communities with Aboriginal Head Start program be.

It’s pretty plain and simple. Having it optional is also baffling, because I know the Minister has seen it, some of our committees have heard it, about the development delays in these communities. If we are seeing development delays, a program like this shouldn’t be optional. It should also be mandatory in some of the small communities, saying families, get your kids into these programs. We’ve got to get them prepared and ready for school.

I know it is a play-based program and that begs to differ in terms of resources we are going to have for some of our small communities.

There’s another motion I wanted to discuss and that was done earlier this year and that was training for early childhood education workers. Right now, we don’t have that in place. In that motion, it mentioned

developing some type of program in the Aurora College system. We haven’t really seen much movement on that. Inuvik would have been a great place. We have a facility that’s not being used 100 percent and we have that new Children’s First Centre that’s going to be there, which brings to point meeting with the executive director of the Children’s First Centre. She was concerned about the amount of students that were going to be taken out of Children’s First Centre who are aged four for junior kindergarten, put into the school, and supporting that is the Beaufort-Delta Education Council saying they are going to have students that are going to go beyond the legislated 16 to 1 pupil-teacher ratio. That 16 to 1 pupil-teacher ratio, as the Minister alluded to earlier this week, is something he is committed to. So he’s committed to having that 16 to 1 PTR. In Inuvik, when we go above that, where are the resources going to be to help our community? It’s not only Inuvik, it’s the regional centres and eventually it’s going to come to Yellowknife.

However, when we look at the statistics, we have seen them in any department, whether it’s development delays, graduation rates, we always see higher stats in the small communities and they slowly drop as you get into regional centres where there are better resource centres for people to access. It’s the same with graduation rates, less in the small communities, but as you go into the regional centres and into Yellowknife, it gets higher. So there’s definitely a concern and a need to get these programs into the small communities.

I’ve been on this file right from the beginning of this government, being chair of the Standing Committee on Social Programs. We got a lot of good feedback. We did have some meetings with experts in junior kindergarten as well as early childhood development. Where I see the best need and the best way this program is moving forward is we’re getting it into the small communities and giving these kids and their families a chance for further development.

I don’t really want to see a delay in this program, even though we’ve got a pilot out. It would be nice to see an evaluation and a report on the pilot. I don’t want to see a delay, because there are kids out there who need the help and assistance to developmentally grow, Mr. Speaker.

A couple of highlights from some of our stakeholders up in the Beaufort-Delta. They mentioned there would be challenges to our existing kindergarten, especially with the multi-level graded classrooms and multi-level developmental stages that the children are going to be having going in there.

A major concern is a lack of funding, where that funding is going to be coming from. As I mentioned before, the Education Renewal Initiative, we don’t

even know where dollars are going with that and how that’s going to be laid out.

I just want to highlight a few of the bigger challenges that they talked about. The physical classroom space for additional bodies, the physical classroom space for additional play resources such as books, play stations, equipment, rest spaces, the lack of curriculum for junior kindergarten. I know it’s play-based, but what type of things are you going to be focusing on? If we don’t have trained early childhood educators, how do they know where the training needs to be in writing, in speech, in cognitive movement, in physical activity? Those things need to be considered.

The lack of resources for purchase of additional play resources, furniture, resting mats. A big one is potty training. You get these four-year-olds that might not even have been potty trained. Do we have enough staff to keep it clean? Who’s buying the diapers if diapers are needed? What about community busing services and students with special needs? As I mentioned, there’s different levels of development in children. If they are coming from the small communities and then make it even further, let’s say families coming from one of the surrounding communities and going into Aurora College and their child might not be at the level that some of the kids in the regional centres or here in Yellowknife might be at. That could be more detrimental than effective and will they get the attention that they need?

The motion brought forward is a good motion. It talks about funding, it talks about trained staff and focusing on communities that don’t have the Aboriginal Head Start program. I support all those areas.

Just like I said when I started off, what baffles me is we’re asking for new funding but we don’t know where the dollars from the Education Renewal Initiative are going.

Collectively, we can still continue to work together. I know we’ve got a lot of organizations out there who have given good feedback as well. I don’t think delaying it is going to help. Any kind of activity right now for age four, especially in the small communities, is going to be beneficial to them. The Minister also made a statement yesterday about if a low-income family or a double-income family who’s working has to put their child in daycare, then it’s almost like one person is just working to pay the daycare, but if we have the Junior Kindergarten Program, the four-year-old goes into the Junior Kindergarten Program and it might save the family some funds.

We do have a high cost of living here in the Northwest Territories, so there’s something that works in that favour as well. In Inuvik I know we just increased prices of child and family services. As a result, some families had to make a decision

whether to continue working or stay home to take care of their children because they were just working to pay the fees. This might be one way to offset that.

However, the motion, everything I agree with. I would just like to know how the funding is going to roll out. As legislators, we represent not only our communities and our constituencies but we represent all of the Northwest Territories that goes from the smallest community to the largest, which is Yellowknife. I think making a decision on moving forward, we’ve come a long way and there is still a lot of work to do. This is something that we need to resolve by the end of the 17th Legislative Assembly.

Mr. Speaker, I will be supporting the motion. Everything in it is things that we’ve heard. I haven’t seen more of an outcry of this program being rolled out than from people of the public. I would like to thank the mover and the seconder for bringing the motion forward. I’m glad to see we have the big city moving the motion and having somebody from a small community seconding the motion. So it goes to show that it’s needed in all our communities across the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.