Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s Education Week, so it’s very timely to have a theme day today on education.
The Department of Education, Culture and Employment is currently pursuing many initiatives. Education Renewal and Early Childhood Development, ECD, are just two of them. ECD generally encompasses the education and care provided for two- to four-year-olds. In the NWT it means licenced daycares, preschools, junior kindergarten and the Aboriginal Head Start program. Using that definition, about 70 percent of NWT two- to four-year-olds attend an Early Childhood Development Program.
That’s pretty good, but what is the quality of education and care that the children are getting? One of our programs, Junior Kindergarten, requires licenced early childhood educators, but a daycare licence issued by the GNWT does not require the staff that they employ to be certified. That they’re not required to do so is a direct result of how much this government spends on ECD. Although JK is fully funded by the GNWT, preschools and licenced daycares are not.
Canada, in comparison to other countries, spends much less for ECD programs, and in Canada the NWT spends the least of all Canadian jurisdictions on early childhood education, in 2014 just 1.1 percent of our total budget. Quebec, on the other hand, spent 4.3 percent of their 2014 budget on early childhood education.
The results of a recent study by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and the University of Toronto show that only 1 percent of the NWT ECD budget goes to fee subsidies for early childhood programs. The GNWT does provide funds to daycares to assist in their operation, but there is no fee subsidy for daycare users, the parents. Amongst the provinces, some spend up to 65 percent of their early childhood budget on subsidies for parents and families. Here the GNWT child care user subsidy is only available by application through income assistance.
To quote the report: “Government subsidy levels often do not match the fees licenced centres must charge to attract and keep qualified staff. Low-income families are unable to pay for the gap between the fees charged and the subsidies governments provide, forcing them to settle for unregulated options.” In the NWT that means unlicensed day homes, a good option for child care, but not the best.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted