Merci, Madam la Presidente. Committee wishes to consider Tabled Document 813-19(2), 2023-2024 Main Estimates, with Department of Education, Culture and Employment. Mahsi, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. We'll take a short recess and resume with the first activity.

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I will now call Committee of the Whole back to order. Committee, we've agreed to consider Tabled Document 813-19(2), Main Estimates 2023-2024. We will now consider the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. Does the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment have any opening remarks?

Yes, I do. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am here to present the Department of Education, Culture and Employment's main estimates for the fiscal year 2023-2024. Overall, the department's estimates propose an increase of approximately $24 million or 6.7 percent over the Main Estimates 2022-2023. These estimates support the mandate objectives while continuing to meet the GNWT's fiscal objectives to prioritize responsible and strategic spending.

Highlights of these proposed estimates include $16.9 million to support new initiatives. The amount is comprised of:

• $10.326 million in additional federal contribution related to the Canada-NWT Canada-wide Agreement on Early Learning and Child Care;
• $5.149 million in additional funding for improvements and changes to the Income Assistance Program; and,
• $1.458 million for further investments aimed at enhancements and changes to the Student Financial Assistance Program.

The proposed estimates also reflect a total increase of $5.197 million for other adjustments, which include:

• $2.028 million for additional federal contribution related to the Canada-NWT Cooperation Agreement on Minority Language Education and Second Official Language Instructions for 2019-2020 to 2022-2023;
• $1.87 million in additional federal contribution towards Building Skills 4 Success;
• $511,000 for the Northwest Territories Teachers' Association for 2020-2021 to 2022-2023 collective agreement cost increases;
• $500,000 in new funding to support the operational needs of heritage centres; and,
• $368,000 for the school funding framework to provide consistent and administrative support to small schools, which is offset by $80,000 in interdepartmental reallocation of French language communications and services budgets.

The proposed estimates also include $4.205 million in additional operations budget related to the reprofile of Labour Market Development Agreement from Fund 3, third party, to Fund 1, operations, and $51,000 in inflationary adjustment increases to core funding for non-government organizations.

The estimates are partially offset by other decreases of $752,000 broken down by the following target adjustments:

• $662,000 in contract services budget reduction that supports the items identified in the 2022-2023 Main Estimates;
• $80,000 in amortization adjustment for 2023-2024; and,
• $10,000 in insurance transfer to the Department of Finance.

The increases are further partly offset by a total decrease of $1.672 million reflecting funding scheduled to sunset on March 31st, 2023. The sunsets reflect year-over-year changes in the departmental activities in the Canada-NWT Workforce Development Agreement, Canada-NWT Agreement on French language services, Education Act Modernization Research, student records coordinators related to the federal Indian Day School Class Action Settlement records, Canada-NWT Early Learning and Child Care Agreement Extension, Specialized Territorial Support Team resources specialized funding, Education Renewal and Innovation and Northern Distance Learning budget changes.

This concludes my opening remarks. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Do you wish to bring witnesses into the House?

Yes, I do.

Thank you. Sergeant-at-arms, please escort the witnesses into the Chamber.

Minister, please introduce your witnesses.

Thank you. On my left is the deputy minister John MacDonald. And on my right is the assistant deputy minister of corporate services, Sam Shannon. Thank you.

Thank you. And welcome. Does committee agree to proceed to the detail contained in the tabled document?

Thank you. Committee, we will defer the departmental summary and review the estimates by activity summary, beginning with corporate management starting on page 35, with information items on page 36. Questions?

There are no questions. Please turn to page 35. Education, Culture and Employment, corporate management, operations expenditure summary, 2023-2024 Main Estimates, $10,982,000. Does committee agree?

Thank you. Culture, heritage, and languages beginning on page 38. Information items on page 39 to 41. Questions? Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair. It's one of my favourite parts of the ECE budget. I understood that there was some kind of revenue study being done for the museum. Can I get an update as to what happened with that? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. The Member is correct; we did have a contract in place to have a revenue study completed. Unfortunately, the contractor did not deliver that revenue study. So for some information about the path forward given the challenges we've been facing, I will hand it to the deputy minister. Thank you.

Thank you. Deputy minister MacDonald.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, I guess in the seven years I've been here, I've seen a lot of studies on the museum, you know, needs assessments and some really good work's been done. And there's a lot of money that needs to be spent to invest in the facility. So is there now an overall plan as to how to do some of that work? Thanks, Madam Chair. And could it be shared with Regular MLAs, even on a confidential basis if required. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. There has been a lot of work done so we're not trying to reinvent the wheel as the deputy minister alluded to. What we are doing is going to pursue the renovations through the normal capital process. So Members will have a chance to get that information through that process. There's nothing that is shareable right now really beyond what the deputy minister has stated. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Yeah, okay, thanks. Maybe something for the transition plan. Of course I know the last time I asked the Minister this, I think it was close to a visit, about changing the name of the facility, which seemed to be tied to actually fixing it up. So are we ever going to change the name of it? And as I understand now, there's no obstacles in the way, there's no protocol stuff, we can just change the name to something that's more reflective of northern culture and heritage. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. As part of that capital process and doing those renovations, we're tying those things together. So once we begin that work, we will consult with Indigenous governments and make determinations about how to move forward with names and what those names might be. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I know we've -- you know, we're consulting on changing the name of the Stanton Legacy Hospital, or the building. You know, I'm not sure I'd even put that as high a priority as the territorial museum, but I want to encourage the department to move forward on that. And you can just put it on the engagement page, you know, and see where that takes us.

But I want to move on to -- in the last budget, the Regular MLAs worked with Cabinet to increase the funding for heritage centres across the NWT by half a million dollars. And I see that increase in here. Can someone just tell me about the uptake in the first year? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. I will hand it over to one of my witnesses. But I will say that for the small organizations to receive a big chunk of money unexpectedly, it makes it difficult for them to just spend it if they didn't have a plan to spend it. In Hay River, we had, you know, the flood, and people were dealing with that, so. I don't think that it saw a significant uptake, at least not at all the centres. But for more information, I'll hand it to Mr. MacDonald. Thank you.

Thank you. Deputy minister MacDonald.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Okay, thanks. Yeah, that's helpful to understand. So I think I've asked this question before maybe but GNWT has quite an extensive inventory of artwork, you know, across, you know, in different buildings. There's some in this building. There's some really cool stuff actually in the Caucus room. But I don't think we actually have an inventory of all of this artwork and some of it is of tremendous value, dollar value, not to mention heritage value. Is there an inventory of this, and what's the role of ECE in preparing an inventory?

Minister of ECE.

Thank you. The role of ECE is providing some expertise when it comes to the value of the pieces, perhaps even the handling of some of them. If it's discovered that this, you know, object in this office should be in a climate control facility, but we -- what we've discovered is that the GNWT's existing sort of inventory management software -- and I'm going to have to hand it to someone else to get into the details and provide exact names, but that can handle the inventory of the art. And so I believe that that work has begun. But I can hand it to Mr. MacDonald for more detail. Thank you.

Thank you. Deputy minister MacDonald.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair. So yeah, I also want to recognize the work at the museum to prepare an inventory of their collection. It's available online now. You can actually see the stuff that's not on display and you can read about it. You know, it's searchable. It's a great tool. And I think that's the model we should be using maybe for a public face to the inventory that we need for all of our artwork across the system. Maybe there's some aspects of that that you wouldn't want to make accessible to the public necessarily, but it would be great to have that kind of a system. Is that what's being contemplated? And of course I can ask these of my friend the Minister of Finance when they're before us, Madam Chair, but while I've got these friends here I'd ask them. Thanks.

Okay, thank you. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. That is not what is being contemplated. The museum does have a site, and it's amazing the way that you can view the different pieces of art. But that is not the plan right now for all of the GNWT-owned art. At some point in the future that would be great, but it is not something that we are currently working on or envision beginning any time soon. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Thebacha.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I read the whole report from the language commissioner, and I was quite concerned about a couple things. One of them is that the language commissioner has said in that report that English and French are priority items within the language thing and the nine Indigenous language are kind of a second priority. That was pretty well the final -- like, some of the things that was said in that report. And I guess my concern is I'm going to -- you know, the official languages report that's coming out from government operations, I agree with it. But, you know, I've decided that I'm not going to be voting -- I'm not going to vote against it, I'm going to abstain, but for the following reasons:

Until the Indigenous languages get the same standard as the French language, you know, I just cannot vote for -- because revitalization of our languages, the Indigenous languages is extremely important to the Indigenous people of the North. And there's a lot of non-Indigenous students that are also taking some of these courses in revitalization in the South Slave. I want to commend the school boards in the South Slave for all they do to revitalize the Aboriginal languages. But I have to make sure that -- I also want to make sure that the director of languages and that department also feels the same way and helps the mandate of revitalization of Indigenous languages. And I wonder if that is going to take place in financial assistance the way it should have. And I don't see that in the entire overall budget. You know, we have French schools, and I'd like to see the day when, hopefully in my lifetime, that we have a school of Indigenous language revitalization. And I want to see how the department feels about that, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. I would love to see a school of language revitalization. There are many efforts going on around the territory. I've spoken about things like the mentor apprentice program. The department has put time and resources into developing post-secondary courses related to languages and hopefully those can be implemented at some point in the future. I mean, there's a lot of ground covered in there, but we do support the revitalization of Indigenous languages. There's great efforts going towards ensuring that we are increasing the number of speakers the best we can, and we'll continue those efforts. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Thebacha.

Mr. Speaker, I do not want to take away from the French or the English languages that we have to know in order to progress to post-secondary. I'm not doing that because those are also a key to our education system. But the main key for the Indigenous people of the North is that the Indigenous languages have to be revitalized and I want to know if we could have -- you know, to start thinking about making sure that there is going to be a school established in the North, the first of its kind, to revitalize the nine Indigenous languages. And so we make a statement that how important the loss of our languages has been to the students and people of the North. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. So as I stated, we are -- put resources in to developing language programming that can be offered at a post-secondary level. My hope is that the college, once it gets its feet under it in terms of the transformation, because there was a lot of work happening there, that they can begin looking at implementing some of those courses and that we can have these, you know, accredited post-secondary courses focused on language revitalization. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Thebacha.

I don't have any other questions.

Are there any further questions under this section? Seeing none, please turn to page 38.

Education, Culture and Employment, culture, heritage and languages, operations expenditure summary, 2023-2024 Main Estimates, $21,306,000. Does committee agree?

Thank you. Committee, please turn to page 43, early learning and child care, beginning on page 43 with information items on page 44 to 46. Questions? Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I'm wondering if the Minister can let us know, under fees and payments there's a significant increase and I'm just wondering what fees and payments come out of there as far as early learning and child care. Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

So I believe those are for the -- we have rolled out a child care fee reduction subsidy, and we provided child care operators with administrative funds so that they could hire administrative support to help them with some of that reporting. So that would account for those increases. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. No, that's helpful information. I'm also just looking at the total raise in funds for the early learning and child care program budget. And I'm wondering what portion of this will go to dollars needed for the increase in the wage grid that is expected to come in the next year? Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. $2.3 million is what we are projecting for this upcoming here, and we do not have a wage grid in place. What we are doing is we're providing wage top-ups essentially. We are providing it this year and in the upcoming fiscal year, we plan to increase that funding. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I'm wondering if the Minister can speak to roughly what that wage top-up will look like from the perspective of ECE. Is that top-up going to be roughly -- or can it even be worked into, you know, an average figure for people who provide early learning and child care across the territory? Thank you.

Thank you, Member. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. So the way that we are distributing that, we look at how many staff are required under the regulations in a child care facility. And based on how many staff are required, which is based on the number of children and the age of the children that that facility cares for, we provide funding for each of those employees that are required. This year the funding is about -- or it is $12,750 for each of those employees. And next year will be just over $16,000. And I say for each of those employees, but this actually goes to the provider itself. It goes to the operator themselves, and then they distribute those funds to their employees because there could be instances where some employees perhaps have higher credentials; they might have diplomas or degrees and operators want to pay them more and they have that flexibility. So we provide them with a lump sum based on how many employees they're required to have and then they distribute it to their employees accordingly. Thank you.

Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, we're in a bit of an interesting jurisdiction where we are also very reliant not only on not-for-profit day cares, but we have a lot of day homes. When my kids went to child care during the day, all three of them went to day home providers, which was wonderful. I still have relationships with those people and adore them. My kids spent more time with those people than they did with me. And so I'm wondering how does it work within the territory as far as these wage top-ups? Is it provided to both day cares and day home providers, and how does that division happen when they both operate under the same act? Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. So day homes are for-profit businesses and nonprofit organizations are, you know, by definition nonprofit. And they have higher operating expenses. They generally have to rent or lease a space. They have salaries. So the parent fees that come into the day care centres versus the day homes don't go quite as far. And so day - child care centre employees are not paid -- don't earn as much as day home operators. So what we want to do is raise the wages of the child care workers so that we're going to attract more people to the sector but also to try to get everyone on par with each other and ensure that there's a level playing field. Thank you. So for that reason, that is why we are only funding the child care centres and not the day homes. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. So I'm wondering can a day home call themselves a not-for-profit and in turn call themselves -- sorry, and in turn pay themselves a living wage, or where does that division happen? Is the division actually between the number of kids they have or the number of employees? How does ECE make that determination, or is it simply based on where they operate out of? Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. I don't think that a for-profit business can call themselves a nonprofit and then, you know, access funding as if they were a nonprofit. So that's not legal advice to the Member but that's my very basic understanding of it. Perhaps for some more information on this and how those two types of organizations are differentiated, I'll hand it to the deputy minister. Thank you.

Thank you. Deputy minister MacDonald.

Thank you. Member for Kam Lake.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to move on to the infrastructure fund. And given that the goal of ECE is to increase spaces by 300 children in the life of the federal agreement, I'm wondering why we're not seeing an increase to this fund given that especially what we're seeing from lessons learned from Quebec was an urge to increase capacity upfront. Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. We have a limited budget, and you can only cut it so many ways. I would love to see that fund increased. I think going forward that is -- may have to happen. We are at a point now where we have been receiving proposals for this fund, and those proposals have resulted in grants to the organization and then new spaces being created. We've seen it across the territory. A lot of the organizations who were on that path to, you know, or thinking about developing child care centres have already accessed this funding and so now we're finding that there's not as many organizations out there that have as well-defined plans. Because it's not just an application to build a child care centre. You also need a plan to operate a child care centre. So that is one of the criteria. So we are trying to figure out now how do we best use these funds to support groups that want to build something, and it might not -- they might not be at the point where they're ready to build; they might need a different type of assistance. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. My -- I probably only have time for one last question. So the supporting child inclusion and participation, it says contributions to target the needs of children who are vulnerable, at risk, or who have specific needs. I'm assuming that this is largely used more in kind of an inclusive for kids with disabilities within a daycare or day home setting. I'm also wondering if given that children of teen parents might fall into a vulnerable or at risk category, if this would also be an avenue to access funding for teen parents? Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. I'll hand it to the deputy minister.

Thank you. Deputy minister MacDonald.

Thank you. Member for Great Slave.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I won't get into the debate about what I feel about the comment of, like -- of the for-profit being the designation between helping and not helping. I would actually want to re-term that as the, you know, for barely-profit or barely-for-profit would be more accurate, I think.

My question, though, is when this money was announced, you know, I had hoped that we would be able to look into putting money into small communities to pay relatives, etcetera, that take care of grandchildren or nieces and nephews and such. And then upon my conversations and my many conversations with day home providers, it's my understanding that in order to do that there would need to be a subclass or sublicense created around a relative caring for kids. And I just want to know if the department is looking at that?

I mean, when I look at this again -- and I mean, go against the grain. I am a Yellowknife MLA however this is only benefitting large regional centres in Yellowknife. It's not benefitting people in small communities where we need people to be able to get out and be employed and be -- we all know being employed leads to better well-being and mental health because you have a reason to get up, you have a point of pride, you could take care of your family. So can the Minister or the department speak to how does this help get money into the hands of the people in small communities that need child care? Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. So in many small communities, there is child care that's provided often by the Indigenous government, and it is often provided free of charge unlike the larger centres. And we are aware of that then we want to support those organizations as well. So a portion of this funding is available to those centres to help them with -- yes, stabilization funding and as well we have our other streams of funding.

In terms of, you know, providing funding directly to, say, grandparents who are looking after their grandkids, we are bound by the terms of the agreement with the Government of Canada. There is a real focus on licensed child care centres. Perhaps I can ask the deputy minister to get into some more of the details around that. Thank you.

Thank you. Deputy minister MacDonald.

Thank you. Member for Great Slave.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I'm well aware; I've heard this department cite many times that it's the feds, it's the feds, it's the feds. Well, then I look at this again as another failure from our Cabinet and our leadership to properly advocate on behalf of the people of our territory. I think all of us in the discussion around child care are well aware that we are not Vancouver, we are not Toronto, we're not even Edmonton. So all I can say is I'm tired of hearing as this as the rationale. We have things in our upcoming bill that aren't even around the funding so I find this to be just a bit of a very easy thing to say rather than actually looking at what people in this community -- or this committee and this group are saying. The day home providers are not making money, and they are educated. They have master's degrees and 30 years of experience and a whole whack of investment into their homes. And the way that they've been treated through all of this is disappointing. And I have realized that the way that this department gets around it is by talking about day cares and supports to day cares, which is not day home providers which I only realized yesterday. And that's where a lot of that confusion has been in the media.

So, Madam Chair, I think this is has been a total failure of a rollout in this funding, and I don't really have any further questions because I'm tired of just hearing it's because of the feds. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any further questions under early learning and child care? Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair. So over on page 44, the contributions, the last item supporting childhood inclusion -- child inclusion and participation, and it shows $1.7 million. I just want to verify what the uptake for that program is and whether it's actually oversubscribed in any way. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

It is fully subscribed.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Okay, thanks, that's good to hear. And maybe we need to increase it, but. You know, I guess the department has capped the ability of daycare providers to capture -- or get revenues from parents. They're also requiring -- will be requiring operators to pay staff more and to have them trained and properly certified. Those are all good things. But they're being squeezed at both ends now. So where in the budget would I find money increasing to daycare providers as an operator subsidy or the support for them; where do I find that? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. So this would be the section, the early learning and child care section. Most of this money flows to the providers. We have a number of programs that support both day homes and day care centres. They're funded on a per child basis. We've increased the funding for staff for day homes. We are working on amending our per child funding as well to ensure that it is more responsive to the needs of child care centres and day homes. I mean, it's a pretty big question. I'll -- I won't just list all of our programs. I'll hand it back to the Member. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Okay, thanks for that. So has the department actually done an analysis to say gee, you know, as a sector, they've reduced income with the capping of the fees as X amount and the increased expenditures is Y amount, because of the training requirements, certification, the pay grid that's going to come in, so we need to increase it by Z amount. Have we calculated X, Y, Z? Thanks -- and does X plus Y equal Z. Thanks, Madam Chair.

I don't know, but Minister of ECE.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. It's been a while since I've done any algebra. But the plan is to develop the programs going forward in conjunction, or in cooperation with the sector to ensure that we have all those numbers and that in the end we are providing child care centres and day homes with the funding that will allow them to be sustainable while still ensuring that our own funding is sufficient. So we only have limited dollars, and we are doing our best to ensure stability and stay within that budget. This is a massive system change. It hasn't been as smooth as I would have liked. If I could do it again, I would definitely make some changes. But that's the situation we're in. We realize that we need to get people on board. We need to be partners with everyone and so we are making those efforts. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Yeah, thanks. Well, I agree with the Minister's assessment. I think part of this is because we signed onto the agreement late. It was late in the financial year and one of the things that had to be done was to make sure that parents had reduced fees, which meant capping the ability for daycare operators to capture revenues.

So if that kind of analysis hasn't been done, it's not a good -- we're not in a good place. And, yeah, if I -- if it could be rolled out again, I'd probably start with the carrots rather than the sticks. So how is the department going to provide some reassurance and confidence to operators that there is going to be more money available to them to deal with these restrictions on income and increased expenditures? And, look, this is all good stuff, I'm not questioning it, I think it's good. But they need -- we need to change the messaging and the bigger picture that we're communicating. And I think that's led to a lot of problems so how is that going to be fixed? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister of ECE.

Thank you. And going back, you know, we needed to reduce fees by 50 percent by the end of 2022. I wanted to get money into families' pockets earlier than that and so I take full responsibility for the quick rollout and the poor relationships. Going back I would have not reduced fees so early. It would have -- you know, we would have -- we would not have put that money back in parents' pockets but the health of the sector, the long-term health I think is what is of the utmost importance. So, you know, that's -- you know, that's something that I learned from. Can I -- one second, please.

And in terms of sufficient funding, the Government of Canada, our agreement with them, increases year after year. The first year we receive less. More money will be received every subsequent year. So our budgets will go up. As we work through these regulations, we'll be able to put a finer point on some of those issues that the Member is talking about.

We did do modelling while we were negotiating this agreement. You know, that led to massive changes in what was being requested from us from the Government of Canada. But until you're actually on the ground working with people one-on-one and the providers and seeing all those numbers in real time, it's difficult to get an accurate accounting. So as we move forward and develop these regulations and work with providers, we hope to settle on a system that everyone's happy with. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair. And thanks for that from the Minister. I guess -- yeah, I get that there's money for this but what I think you need to do is to change the messaging a little bit. Probably more than a little bit. But you want to instill some confidence and rebuild some trust here that there is more money for day home operators, for child cares, and it's coming. And some of that needs to be coming out of this budget. And you need to make that the message now, because you're restricting their ability to raise money, you're also increasing their costs. You're not telling them that you're going to increase their funding. So can we start to deliver that message, Madam Chair? Thank you.

Thank you, Member. Minister of ECE.