Alfred Moses

As I have said many times in this House, it is going to be implemented in all the schools in the Northwest Territories in the 2017-18 school year, not next fiscal year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. After the announcement yesterday, staff at the department is going to be contacting all the superintendents of all the boards. Once we get those initial discussions completed, I myself will have a meeting with all the board chairs to look at how we are going to be allocating this additional funding throughout the schools in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I do believe I just answered that question, but the department is currently working with the education authority superintendents to determine how to allocate the additional funding.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I do realize that I could have been a little bit clearer in my answers to questions on junior kindergarten yesterday. I do apologize for that.

Junior kindergarten is expected to cost $5.1 million to implement. The additional $2.7 million that was announced, along with the original investment of $1.5 million, plus $900,000 that we've identified internally within the department, will cover the implementation costs. We are committed to continue working with the superintendents and the District Education Councils towards the smooth implementation of junior kindergarten...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government does support a lot of youth initiatives right across all departments within the governments. MACA, obviously, is one of the bigger supporters in the youth program. We feel that all our programs address the needs of youth across the Northwest Territories, right into our smallest communities. We have the NWT Youth Ambassadors Program, which has been very successful. Both my departments and the Department of MACA work together to support and fund the Northern Youth Abroad Program.

We have various programs that communities can access funding. As I mentioned...

As I mentioned, Mr. Speaker, we are going to have to have those discussions with the superintendent and the board chairs. When we first initially rolled out junior kindergarten, as you know, 23 communities did the uptake, and some of them couldn't do it because they didn't have any four-year-olds. That is going to reflect the operational costs as we fund junior kindergarten moving forward. Those initial discussions have to happen before we can look at how we are going to be using that additional funding that was announced yesterday in the budget. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, it is great news, and I am glad the Member is getting calls because it has been quite the announcement that we made yesterday. As I mentioned, our department is working with all the superintendents and the education authorities to look at how we are going to be allocating this additional funding. I can't give him a timeline until we have those discussions with the superintendents and then the board chairs.

Yes, we do have additional money specifically for the playbased learning resources as well as infrastructure. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As you heard in the Budget Address, we have that initial investment of $1.5 million this year, and then we will be rolling out the 2.7 before the end of the 18th Legislative Assembly.

In terms of some funding, that other funding, working with our education authorities, we do fund our education authorities $152 million every year. We've asked our education authorities to look within their budgets to find about 2 per cent to help offset the costs. We believe that the education authorities have the leadership, the fiscal management skills, and the financial flexibility to be able to cover the...

I am aware of the request that was made from community justice in Fort McPherson, and we will be bringing this attention forward to the departments responsible and seeing how we can look at reviewing that proposal and whether or not we can fund the program.

Obviously, our communities that are on the road system are ones where we find some of our biggest concerns with alcohol, with drugs, and I know that it's something that wants to be addressed. I guess we are in the process of reviewing that proposal right now, and, as soon as we come up with a solution, we'll get back to the Member.