Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you to my colleague for bringing up both school elections and the school insurance issue here in Yellowknife. I think that is probably one that you will hear reiterated from every Yellowknife MLA. While I am on the same track, Jordan's Principle is also on my list of things to talk about here today, and I appreciate the figure that was provided by the deputy minister of $49 million. I think also another piece of that puzzle that is worth notice is that, if you go through the history between 2018, 2019, and 2020, the contributions to the Northwest Territories start at about $7 million, and then the following year they go to about $14 million, and then last year they went to about $28 million. Every year, consecutively, they have been doubling. That, to me, especially when you start talking about where the contributions are going to, says that we really need to beef up our contribution to this section of the budget.
If the federal government all of a sudden decided no longer to fund Jordan's Principle, which we really hope they never ever do, we would be in serious trouble here. We would be losing a huge contribution to our school system. This is one that I encourage the Minister to go back out to FMB and to beef up this portion of the budget if possible. I think that making larger contributions to our kids will pay for itself in spades down the road. I would love to see teachers be able to focus more on teaching and less on some of the other pieces that this money goes to pay for.
In talking to teachers in both the schools that I serve and the riding that I serve, a lot of times teachers are spending a predominant amount of time getting kids ready to learn and not necessarily teaching kids. One of the things that a few of the schools I know in Yellowknife have used Jordan's Principle funding for is a community liaison worker. What that person does is they act as a government-system navigator. They connect families to different programs within the GNWT so that families are better supported so that kids are hopefully in a better position to learn. That reminds me of another position within Health and Social Services, which is, I believe they are called, a family preservation worker within Health and Social Services. In thinking of kind of the child and youth care coordinator program that happened, where Health and Social Services started positions within the schools, I am wondering if the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment is also looking at a similar setup to be able to fund community liaison workers within our schools. Thank you.