Alfred Moses

It’s not mandatory for any grades. As I’ve mentioned, it is at the discretion of the education authorities and councils to decide if they are going to reallocate for busing to provide busing services to their students. It is not mandatory for any grades at this point. However, Mr. Speaker, I can tell you that our department is committed and continues to work with education authorities to address the busing situation when it comes to junior kindergarten students.

Yes, we will take that information. We will have discussions, obviously, when we go before committee, and continue further to have these discussions and how we establish regional youth councils or even a territorial youth council. That is information we will look at, and we will bring it to committee to get feedback from committee moving forward. We will continue to evaluate the programs such as Back to the Trail, the program that I and the Minister of Health just attended, and see the successes and where we move from there. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As we engage with youth, we always get feedback on how the programs are, whether we want to continue working to support those programs. The one in particular that we just attended earlier this week is an excellent one. Both I and the Minister of Health encouraged and challenged youth to come up with policies, come up with ways we can move forward into what we need to do as a government and the decisions that we need to do, and that is where it starts.

This is a new generation of our young adults that is going to be taking over our seats and other leadership in the community, and we want to get...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to recognize some of our executive from the NWT Teachers' Association. Our president, Mr. Fraser Oliver; executive director, Adrien Amirault; and our past president and past Canadian Teacher Federation vice-president, Ms. Amanda Mallon.

Mr. Speaker, together they have over 91 years of teacher experience in the Northwest Territories and I want to thank them for that. That is a lot of experience and a lot of hearts and minds that they've touched. Any other educators who are here joining us today, welcome. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am not sure where the Member is getting her numbers from. We still have to wait and see how many junior kindergarten students, four-year-olds, are going into the school program, and then we can continue to work with the education authorities to find a solution and find ways that we can cover the costs once those numbers are established.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know our discussions with education authorities, we did have those discussions that it’s not mandatory and that education authorities have the discretion to reallocate some of the funding that the department provides to them to offset some of the costs that are associated with busing, so that will be up to the district education authorities as well as the education councils. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Such programs as the Youth Ambassador Program, the one that we just worked with the Department of Health on, we engage youth from all 33 communities in the Northwest Territories. This one in particular we had a really good engagement, from 12yearolds right up to 18, asking them what we need to do in terms of policy change, legislation change, programs and services that we need to provide. We will continue to work with the departments and our communities to address those.

It was not a no. We support our youth. The youth is our future, and anything that works in government, we need to hear from...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Minister responsible for Public Education, we have to provide the same programs and services to all communities across the Northwest Territories. As I mentioned, I can't look into the future and see where parents are going to put their children in terms of early childhood programming. What we are doing is we are addressing the needs of four-year-olds right across the territory, and we are going to continue to do that.

Providing early childhood quality programs and services throughout the Northwest Territories is a mandate of this government. On October 1, 2016, we made a commitment to all early childhood providers across the Northwest Territories by making changes to our early childhood programs, the way we fund them. I also want to assure to the Member, as well as families with four-year-olds, that JK is an option for families and a choice for families where they want to have their four-year-olds get the early childhood program services that they need.

Yes, those are some of the things that we have been hearing as we were going out doing our consultation, and we will share that detail when we go before standing committee.