Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this motion as well. In August 2016 I was honoured to be present to see students graduate from Deh Gah Elementary and Secondary High School and the Minister was there too and witnessed three students that began their lifelong education quests at the start of the Aboriginal Head Start program, and I wanted to emphasize that.

The Aboriginal Head Start program has been in existence for a long time; it is community-based and it involves the community, parents and elders who incorporate the knowledge, at the same time prepare kids that are four years old into grade school, and so it's been very successful in the communities that I serve in my riding and at the same time on the K’atlodeeche Reserve and also the whole of the NWT.

It's important to note that this motion recognizes the need for community strategy. There has been, for some time, an adversarial approach in terms of JK versus Aboriginal Head Start program. We need to get beyond that. We need to see how this whole vision of JK is going to work for the benefit of the children that we have in our communities, and to ensure that, you know, we put our best efforts forward to ensure that we have consensus to making this successful.

I'm very encouraged that there were recommendations that were brought forth at community level and that the department is going to work on it and develop an implementation plan associated with the budget in terms of costs and how much could be provided to communities that will make a decision to be involved with JK.

At the same time, I believe that JK and the Aboriginal Head Start Program could coexist and work in parallel. At the same time, I understand that, indeed, we could make it work and this motion sets that seed and that process forward so that we could work at the community level to ensure that we reach a point of success. Mahsi.