Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There is a high demand, actually, for people who are licensed, who have the qualifications for early childhood development. I know that from personal experience. My previous job before I came into the Assembly, I operated a non-profit organization that had a daycare facility. Of that daycare, only one person had the qualifications, which leaves daycares in jeopardy around supervision of children, around capacity of getting people, and parents' concerns.

Is it okay that we have children in licensed daycare providers' homes that we are paying good money for, that the...

I thought I was clear. For clarification, Mr. Chair, any child who is in junior kindergarten or kindergarten is not compelled to be in school. It is not a mandatory requirement, although we try to work with the parents, and encourage them to attend. Any child from Grade 1 to 12 is mandatory to be in that. There are some repercussions for it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To clarify, the bulk of the money from the bilateral wasn't all put into training. It was given out through a variety of early childhood intervention programming. Of the money, I think that it was wise of the previous Minister. It is not only about getting licensed childcare; it is actually having the credentials. The Minister before me realized that was an issue, and so instituted the change to the one-year early childhood development program from one year to actually a two-year program and moved from 10 scholarships to 30 scholarships. At this point, my belief is that...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. No child who is enroled in junior kindergarten or kindergarten is it compulsory that they attend. It's an optional programming, both of them. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There are a number of issues that affect bringing licensed childcare into communities. We don't keep records of unlicensed childcare, so I have to state that. There are a lot of communities that use their aunties, grandmothers, et cetera. Those ones, we don't record. There are two that I can think of right now, Fort Liard and Tsiigehtchic, came on. Sometimes, you get a licensed childcare centre, and then they don't get the staff properly. There were some internal issues with the community, family issues with communities. Sometimes, they fall apart. The reality is, in...

Thank you. Attendance being compulsory is not something that I would actually commit to at this moment. The reason I'm not willing to commit to that is because we need to look at that. At my last education meeting with the superintendents and chairs of all the school boards across the Northwest Territories, I brought up the issue of attendance because it's a concern of mine, and I said that, in the next Assembly, we need to look at attendance because, if we can't get the kids to school, we're not going to be able to get them educated and they're not going to succeed.

One thing I did hear, and I...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my right, I have Mr. John MacDonald. He is the assistant deputy minister for education and culture. On my left, I have Shelley Kapraelian, who is the director of early childhood development. I brought them as witnesses in case there is any more in-depth information that they can provide. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Again, the three-year total for the federal is $7 million, and two point something of that a year, so it's a three-year funding agreement.

You're right. I have to say the MLAs are right. We're not putting enough investment into early childhood development, but, as has been said by many Ministers at the table, our whole budget is $1.6 billion, or something like that, and there's not enough money to go around. I don't see that we should take all from one. I think maybe we need to look at the balance, but I do believe in balance. I believe that we need to have early childhood...

Absolutely, Mr. Speaker, that is the committee we are talking to. It will be the NGOs, and, of course, we will be bringing in clientele as well with that. Like I said, one of my strongest philosophies is "nothing about us without us," and so that was an easy commitment. It's an embarrassment on the behalf of Education, Culture and Employment that we have not done that in the past, so we learned from our history. We learned from our mistakes, and, moving forward, we will be engaging them on a regular basis, twice a year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Honestly, I had never thought about that, but consensus government is working together. I think that is a really valuable idea, and so I will implement that, because I think it's important. They are the ones who are actually be utilizing the form. They should be the ones stamping and saying, "This works for me."