Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Before the meetings that we had with all the board chairs and superintendents in December, there was a request for all our education authorities to come back and find money to help implement junior kindergarten. We've made an additional investment that brought the numbers down, so it is the 2.7 that we are looking for, thank you, just for confirmation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have various programs throughout all the departments that focus on youth within the GNWT. Justice has some funding, obviously, and the ECE and our schools have funding. MACA has sports and recreation and youth funding programs.

We can provide the Member with all the applicationtype funding that we give to youth programming, share it with him so that they can look at the appropriate ways to fill out an application should we want to bring the Odd Squad up to the NWT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

We currently have a lot of partnerships moving forward where we continue to fund. We have labour market agreements where we work with municipal communities. We also work with businesses. We have a small communities employment program that works with communities to help address some of these needs that are needed. For apprentices and the program to move forward, right now we can't put any dollar figures to it when we don't have a strategy, and that strategy is going to come out in April.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Currently, we are working on developing a strategic plan that we have worked with many industry partners, businesses, to get the input. We do know there are challenges out there in terms of practices. We have also heard this when we were at the mineral roundup working with certain industry. We worked with Aboriginal groups as well. The Aboriginal governments that came down to mineral roundup also brought this up. We are working on a strategy right now that we are hoping to have brought before the House sometime this year. Thank you.

Thank you. As I mentioned, we do have a lot of partnerships. The strategy is going to reflect what we are hearing from the businesses, industry, and the dollars that we have already allocated to the labour market areas is going to be same thing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Member wants a firm date. We should have it released by April.

As I mentioned on many occasions, since I've been in the position I've been to 20 out of the 33 communities in the NWT. We've seen some successful junior kindergarten programs in some of the regions that have been implementing them, whether it's the first year or even the third year. So I'd be more than happy to join the Member on a community tour and look at the programs, early childhood programs, in this community.

As we move forward into the implementation of junior kindergarten and some of the recommendations that were made out of the motion we'll continue to engage with child day homes, day care centres, as well as Aboriginal Head Start in making sure that the transition to junior kindergarten is moved in a good manner, and that we share all the information moving forward. We do understand some of the concerns that are coming specifically out of the Member's region and we're trying to work on addressing those.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Government of the Northwest Territories has made a commitment in its mandate to take steps to close the skills gap using the Skills 4 Success Strategic Framework. I am pleased to advise Members that later today I will be tabling the Skills 4 Success Four-Year Action Plan 2016-2020, which outlines what we will do to improve employment success for the people of the Northwest Territories. This is an important milestone in meeting our mandate commitments.

The action plan aligns with the Skills 4 Success 10-Year Strategic Framework and contains four goals related to...