Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today my statement is on Junior Kindergarten, much like my colleague Mrs. Groenewegen. Many people in the small communities, and in the larger communities, as well, feel that this government has rushed in to implement the Junior Kindergarten initiative without first reviewing the pilot projects that happened last year in the small communities. To make things worse, the student/teacher ratio was also changed just last year from 8 to 1 to now 16 to 1. We also have a number of challenges with lack of resources and funding. This year all that was given to the schools to implement this was $15,000, and if you didn’t implement it this year, next year you won’t get anything. There is also a shortage of staff.

In Fort McPherson, for example, we have 14 junior kindergarten and 14 kindergarten students. Can you imagine taking on 28 small children in one classroom without any assistants?

There are also concerns of training in the field of early childhood development. Kindergarten teachers are not required to have early childhood development training.

I’ll have questions for the Minister later today.