Alfred Moses

Over the course of this government and the end of the 17th Legislative Assembly, a lot of work has gone into early childhood programming. This government made it a mandate and a priority during the life of the 18th Legislative Assembly, and we continue to try to address high cost early childhood program needs. I will take that suggestion back to the department and see what we can work on and look at. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I'm proud to say that currently we have 23 communities across the Northwest Territories that offer early childhood programming. In the last little while we worked with some of our smallest communities to incorporate daycare programs, day home programs, and we're continuing to work with the other communities to get that up and running, and working with them on how we will do that.

We have made significant increases to the daily rates for early childhood program funding that came into effect October 1st of 2016. We do have start-up costs for people, groups, organizations that want to start up...

We are not even a month into the school year, and we have to look at some of the data that we are collecting from our education authorities. We did provide the education authorities with their funding targets. They gave us their operational plans. The education authorities also have a responsibility to roll out their plans within the partnerships that we have with them and the contribution agreements that we have with them. We will wait until we see that data to address it. I have mentioned that education authorities can come back and look at extraordinary enrolment formulas to address some of...

During the first year of the territorial implementation of JK, which has just started this school year, specific needs for children with exceptionalities are unknown. After the first full year of territorial JK, ECE will review the needs of the children who are in attendance so we will have a better understanding.

Now, should enrolments increase this year, the education authorities are eligible for additional funds through an extraordinary enrolment formula. We will ensure that a 12:1 staffing ratio exists for junior kindergarten students. As we roll out junior kindergarten, we will have a...

Our Student Financial Assistance Program must abide by the act and regulations when determining a student's eligibility. We also strive to treat all students fairly and consistently, and decisions must be made in accordance with the regulations. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Once again, it is really up to the student whether they go by air or by land. Airfare travel is based on the cost from the student's home community to the nearest approved institution offering that same program. If they decide to go to post-secondary by land, then land travel is reimbursed based on mileage only.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, have a couple of Pages who have been with us this week from Inuvik Boot Lake, Kaylin Harder and Isobel Jellema. Thank you for the hard work that you have done this week. We really appreciate it, and to all Pages who have helped us get through the days this week, thank you. Mahsi cho.

I know our career development officers at the regional centres do a great job of highlighting the Skills 4 Success document, the action plan, as well as our labour market information needs assessment. We work with partners with other departments. We work with our partners in business. We work with our partners in education, taking it into the schools as well as post-secondary. I will make sure that my colleagues within the Department of Health and Social Services, as we look forward to having more work force in the health centre for an ongoing purpose, do understand some of the needs of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We did release the Skills 4 Success action plan in November of 2016, so we are just coming up to about a year of having that out there in the public and in the communities throughout the Northwest Territories. We are working with our partners. We are working with schools. We are working with post-secondary institutions and CLCs to get that information out there on how we can address that. Specifically with the Sahtu region, if the Member recalls, we have four goals under the Skills 4 Success, and under each one we have a lot of priorities. To get a progress on all the...

We continue to try to see what we can do in terms of providing subsidies for our infants to four-, five-, six-year-olds who go into early childhood programming. Junior kindergarten I think was a very good step in terms of providing early childhood programming for families in our communities right across the Northwest Territories. We continue to see how we can address the high cost of living. I think one big one was changes to the Canada Child Benefit as well as changes to the NWT Child Benefit; I think really made a big improvement in that area.