Is the Minister able to put on the record how many students have been diagnosed through using telehealth so, again, we can appropriately spend the right inclusive money on the students that need it most? Rather than just targeting based on estimates, I’m really a believer that the money should follow the student, and regardless of where that student is going to, so whatever institution, to me, matters little. Quite frankly, it’s a matter about ensuring that appropriate funding is there for that student and the institution being able to facilitate regular instruction in a proper instructional setting.

Would the Minister be able to highlight how many times telehealth has been used in this ability? I think he just said that it’s a tool they use. I’d like to know a little more detail as to how often they use it and maybe about how much money, time and effort they’ve been using and for how long, of course.

Obviously, I don’t have the detailed breakdown because we still have to get that information from the district education council, but as soon as we get that we can share it with the Members.

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. Mr. Hawkins, your time is expired. If you need to get back on, let me know.

Committee, just a reminder, we’ve had one round of questions on this activity, and the chair recognizes that this is a fairly large activity by number and I will allow another round as needed for completion. I would ask though, committee, to shorten the preamble still a little bit more and try to get more questions in during your time allotment.

That being said, next on my list for second rounds on this activity is Mr. Bromley, followed by Ms. Bisaro and Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do have a lot of questions. I’ll see what I can get through here, and I appreciate very short, concise answers. Junior kindergarten, what’s the junior kindergarten implementation dollar amount for the 29

communities scheduled in ’14-15? That’s the year under discussion.

Secondly, I know the Minister has agreed that a fully qualified ECE worker is needed for every junior kindergarten group. I don’t call them a class because that implies teaching. We’re talking child development. The Minister has agreed with that, but I still haven’t heard him commit to meeting this precondition. Will he make that commitment? Two questions there.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. In order to achieve the 29 communities by the 2014-15 school year on junior kindergarten, it will cost us approximately $2.8 million on an annual basis. The Member is referring to the qualification. We’ve highlighted already the types of training that will be required and training that we’re going to be delivering to these individuals and also the operators. More specifically, when it comes to junior kindergarten, we have to work with the kindergarten teachers as well. We’re understanding of and share the Member’s concerns, and we’re going to be developing an action plan towards that. We do have some time to roll that out. This is an area that I’ve highlighted of providing various training pertaining to that, so we’ll continue to push that forward.

Would the Minister commit to providing committee a briefing in writing or in person on the various levels of qualifications for early childhood education workers and how many of each level – I think he gave us some information on that but perhaps he could provide that in writing – that are available by community, and what level of ECE worker qualification is provided by Aurora College programs currently, number of graduates and what the plan is for the immediate future in terms of training actually fully qualified ECE workers?

For sure, we’ll provide all that information, because we want the Members to work with us, as well, with as much information as we possibly can to deliver to them. In addition, we can provide those spaces that are available that I had mentioned, I believe, yesterday. We’ll provide that detailed information on all those questions that were asked.

Thanks to the Minister. Very briefly, a comment, this will be my last comment hopefully on ECD, early childhood development. The premise that junior kindergarten is the way to go rather than focussing on zero to three, I know the Minister is aware that this is a contention here. Particularly on the claim that because services for zero to three age classes are fragmented, is a great leap and highly debatable, huge assumptions made there and I totally disagree with that. I think we are missing the boat. There is little evidence that the

issues we are seeing can be addressed through junior kindergarten nearly as much as a coordinated effort in the early, early years. I’ll leave it at that. That’s my strong belief and I believe I can back that up with evidence.

I’m just wondering: I see the Aboriginal languages section of this division is very important and I have spoken out consistently in favour of that work. I just want to point out to the Minister what I think is a kernel and that is a TED Talk by a lady, I think her name is Patricia Kuhl, entitled “The Genius of Babies.” In that 10-minute TED Talk, it demonstrates, with massive amounts of data, that the window of opportunity between the ages of five and seven months, a five to seven-month-old human being, is absolutely amazing for picking up language and providing the basis for the rest of their life for multiple languages. So I would love to see the department take advantage of that opportunity, realizing that the department is not delivering all the programs, but this would be important information to get out to our partners and to use to guide at least the significant amount of our funding on languages. Can I just get a brief comment from the Minister on that? Mahsi.

Mr. Chair, those are just some of the discussions that we need to have with various researchers out there, programs that have been successful, as Members indicated one of the programs on Aboriginal language, so we need to compile that information. At the same time, we are working very closely with the Aboriginal governments. As indicated in my Minister’s statement, we are re-profiling funding back to the communities, back to the Aboriginal governments because they are the experts when it comes to Aboriginal language, and we are there to assist them and to support them and work closely with them. So, I agree with the Member. All that information is out there. We have been researching, and working with and enhance what’s before us and if there are best practices, by all means we’ll take full advantage of it. Mahsi.

Thanks to the Minister. I find myself returning to early childhood development, probably not surprisingly. Just in terms of the work to establish family resource centres, child and family resource centres and activities in communities, I think we’re a year and a half into the work in Ndilo and Detah, which already had some work already going on there. What is the outreach plan for other communities and what is the long-range plan for those centres, and particularly how are they being focused on the early years? Mahsi.

Mr. Chair, we have contacted two pilot projects in two communities and that’s been successful to date. We just want to find out, I guess, how it turns out and so we’ve been quite impressed with that.

As we move forward, we’re going to be working very closely again with the Department of Health and Social Services to identify what came out of the pilot project, and based on that, part of the process will be to start implementing particular programming into other communities as well. We’re at very preliminary discussions right now with the two departments, and as we move forward, we will definitely be sharing that information with the Members. If we’re going to be identifying let’s say a community that we’re going to do another project or program delivery, then we’ll definitely give a heads-up to the Members before we start that. Mahsi.

A huge disappointment here, obviously. This is molasses at 40 below. The committee has been clear that we want these on-the-ground community programs in place. So, based on what I heard, if I heard it accurately, extremely disappointing.

As we know, last year at this time, when we looked at the budget, the money had not been delivered to those communities, or perhaps it was delivered during the week that we were discussing it. So within a few weeks they had to spend all that money, probably frantically and inefficiently. So, again, I’m not impressed and I think this department needs some serious tune-up in this area, if I am hearing the Minister accurately. I’m just not hearing much that makes me grin. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I didn’t quite hear a question in there Mr. Bromley, is there a question?

I would love to hear the Minister respond and correct me.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Lafferty.

Mr. Chair, all I can say at this point is that two pilot projects have been a success. We gave the contribution and they have expended the contribution. Future programming, we’re still talking about that with the two departments, so if we move that along, we will definitely be sharing that information with the Members. Mahsi.

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. Mr. Bromley, you have a few seconds left on the clock. Mr. Bromley.

Yes, just to finish that off, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the Minister. Did the communities receive the same funding this year as they did last year, or did they receive the full amount last year, and are we committed, are these long-term programs now, or are we still trying to portray these as pilot projects that nobody is going to invest in?

We’re still trying to figure out the numbers here. To my understanding,

through the briefings that I’ve received, both projects, both communities have received the fullest contribution, and if I am mistaken, then my staff can correct me if I’m wrong. That’s my understanding. The Member is also referring to if this particular project will continue, and those are the discussions that we are currently having with the Department of Health and Social Services as part of the Early Childhood Development Action Plan. We need to discuss those more in detail. Mahsi.

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. Moving on with the second round of questions on this activity, I have Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to follow up on Mr. Bromley’s comments and the Minister’s response before I go into what I’ve got, I’m disappointed that at this point in time we don’t know whether or not we’re going to continue to fund the two pilots that we started in this current budget year. I guess I have to leave it at that. There’s no question there, but I guess I feel really strongly that if these were pilots, we should have known before… One month before the end of the budget year, we should have been looking at evaluating these pilots and determining whether or not it’s going to be ongoing funding for the next year.

I wanted to ask a further question on junior kindergarten and it’s similar to the pilots that were run for the child and family resource centres. My understanding was that we had, I think, two junior kindergarten pilots in this current budget year. I’d like to know whether or not the Minister or the department can tell me if there has been an evaluation of those two junior kindergarten programs that they were running. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. The Member refers to the two pilots. Again, we are working closely with the Department of Health and Social Services on part of the Healthy Family programming, so we will do what we can to deliver similar programming as we move forward with ECD Action Plan. If there has been an evaluation of the junior kindergarten, the pre-kindergarten, at this time we haven’t done a review of that, but we are fully aware of the program delivery and we’re getting as much information on the deliverance of the program. So we’re still compiling all that information.