Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the federal government's universal child care goal is to build a Canada-wide community-based system of quality care. This is good news. But unfortunately this good news has had a rocky shotgun start here in the Northwest Territories. While the foundation for $10-a-day child care takes shape, some struggles we are seeing aren't new to this funding model.
The federal government's own explicit model in this new Canada-wide social program is Quebec who, in 1997, built an affordable child care system. This system has led to large increases in birth-giver employment and prominent economists say that child care reforms will, over time, pay for themselves in increase government revenues and lower benefit costs.
Mr. Speaker, Quebec's program saw its own growing pains and, luckily, the NWT can learn from their experience. The Institute for Research on Public Policy published four recommendations to address the anticipated growing pains of universal child care . The recommendations called for increased early childhood educator wages, being prepared to inject more funding as no one has addressed whether the federal commitment will actually achieve its goals, and to close the maternity and parental gap benefits. But ultimately, they concluded Quebec tried to do too much too fast and should have focused first on rapidly expanding capacity.
Mr. Speaker, the GNWT's current early childhood infrastructure fund has a $1 million budget for projects that preserve, expand, or create new centre-based child care infrastructure in NWT communities. Most recently, the Yellowknife Daycare Association built a new facility that serves 104 children. In 2018, this build costs roughly $4 million. The Yellowknife Daycare Association currently has over 400 children on their waitlist. Pair this with ECE's desire to create 300 new child care spaces NWT-wide, and we know this fund will not go far enough to address the needs of our territory.
Mr. Speaker, you don't need to look far here in Yellowknife to find an entrepreneur, healthcare worker, teacher, or public servant looking for child care to meet a looming return to work deadline without any nibbles of potential open spaces. To see this initiative's success, the GNWT needs to be ready to inject more funding in operations and infrastructure through substantial capital grants or loan guarantees to accelerate a coordinated sector expansion.
Working toward universal child care is a good news story, Mr. Speaker. But without learning from Quebec's growing pains, we are already walking in their footsteps, and I worry we are not properly preparing ourselves for a successful next mile. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
