Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Of course I’d like to thank the mover and the seconder for bringing this to a debate here on the floor. For the record, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I do support junior kindergarten, but I don’t expect that people would understand the funding model that we heard today as being one which is acceptable to the people, and I agree with them.

We have heard over the past week terms like turmoil, we’ve heard tug-o-war, we’ve even heard the word poaching, just to name a few. These are all in relation to the funding model of the JK delivery in the NWT.

We’ve taken a very positive initiative that has had much promise and we’ve started with an ill-conceived funding model. Again, on this side of the House, we’ve heard from the various school boards, we’ve heard from the trustees, we’ve heard from the parents, we’ve heard from the day home operators, we’ve heard from the Aboriginal Head Start stakeholders and the taxpayers that we’re all gravely concerned that ECE is not listening and they’re not listening to our concerns. This whole initiative from day one was touted as being good for all, but financed by a few. The few I’m referencing really means mostly the larger municipal school boards and authorities, and of course, Yellowknife taxpayers.

Let’s put all numbers aside because sometimes with using too many numbers it will confuse the listener and we actually lose the message that we’re trying to bring them today. As we all heard, the department does not have any money. We heard that today, we’ve heard that a number of times today, but they saw some surplus money in various authorities and they exercised their statutory authority. Stealing, poaching, if you will, Jedi mind trick, I don’t care what terminology you use, it’s clear, the money is reallocated from one pot of money to another and apparently under the law. But now what is the fallout if this should happen to the larger school boards and authorities? It’s clear, we’re going to have increasing classroom size, we’re going to have huge loss of jobs, and quite frankly, we can’t even quantify how many jobs will be lost. We’re not going to have increased pressure on our special needs students? I disagree. If you take budgets away, it will affect someone else and I don’t conceive the fact that our inclusive schooling students will be not affected.

The district that I have most concern with, and this hasn’t been mentioned today, is that these forced changes to the mill rate will be affected and they’ll be affecting the school boards here in Yellowknife and to the Yellowknife taxpayer. As I see it, the taxpayers in Yellowknife have already had their taxes stripped from their hard-earned money and it’s going to the public government and also they’re taxed by the mill rate. Just for a quick reference, the taxes that are being paid by Yellowknife residents are roughly about 20 percent of the budget of the two school boards here in Yellowknife. So, clearly, the removal, the reduction, call it poaching of the much hard-earned surpluses, will no doubt have a huge impact and this will have a huge impact on the triggering mechanism. I’ll say this again here, a triggering mechanism, because these surpluses are being taken away. So the school boards themselves are going to have to find ways to mitigate those losses and the only way to mitigate those losses is triggering a higher mill rate. That mill rate triggering mechanism could be as high as

20 percent, according to some of the calculations that we’re getting.

The cost of living affects everyone in the Northwest Territories and our capital city is no different. So how can the Minister look in the whites of the eyes of the Yellowknife taxpayers and say, hey, we want your money because I don’t have any myself. That’s what we’re hearing here today. How can the Department of Education expect the Yellowknife taxpayers that have their taxes and their mill rate and their surpluses used somewhere else because that’s exactly what we’re telling them. But moreover, how does the Department of ECE expect the Yellowknife taxpayer, who is already double taxed are now being set up to be triple taxed, once off their earnings, a second at the current mill rate and now we’re triggering a future mill rate increase, all the while to fund an ECE ill-conceived funding model. Is this fair? Is this reasonable? I can tell you that the taxpayer is saying this is ludicrous. It’s an insult to the taxpayer, and to suggest this triple taxation plot could conceivably start this fall. The irony is that the taxpayer is going to be paying all of this and the taxpayer here in Yellowknife will not see the benefits of JK for three more years. Is that fair? This is a fail.

I don’t care how you cut it, as great as JK is, Junior Kindergarten, as I said before, it is a great program, whether it is optional or not optional, this department, this Minister has only one option here today and that’s to listen to the people of the Northwest Territories, listen to these people on this side of the House, listen to your school boards who are sitting in the gallery and listen to the taxpayer. We bring here today a motion that is fair, that is reasonable.

Minister, are you listening? Thank you.