Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Providing professional development for daycare staff or for people who are looking into getting into the field is part of the solution to making childcare more affordable and more accessible. If we don't have qualified staff to provide the services, it is not accessible. We had people in childcare centres who don't have the qualifications. We are trying to improve them.

Our children are our most valuable resource. We need to provide the support so that they get the quality programming. We are providing the two-year early childhood development. It is going to be a diploma...

Yes, absolutely. Actually, getting daycares into the communities is a priority. It's a mandate within this government, the 18th Legislative Assembly. We have 11 communities that don't have daycares, although we are working with a couple of them. Some of them aren't in the Member's ridings. Yes, we have regional coordinators who will go in and support anyone in the communities who is looking up to open up a daycare. We have start-up money. We have health and safety money.

Like I have said, we provide subsidies for the daycares directly. There's a lot of support. We need daycares. There's lot of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the Canada and Northwest Territories Early Learning and Childcare Bilateral Agreement was signed. Within that agreement, it's not really designated for communities as much, but within the terms of early childhood development where they have extra money to top up our money, we will be using that for providing things like we are doing ECD, or early childhood development. There used to be a certificate program. We are now doing a diploma program with Aurora College. We have increased our scholarships for people trying to get into early childhood development. It used...

At this time, no, we are not supporting extra money for people to come in. I think it would be huge. It's a great idea. However, in honesty, it would be huge on daycares. That's based on my background with running daycares. It's that they use volunteers from all over the communities. It's powerful. The centre that I ran, they had speech pathologists coming in and, you know, people from Health and Social Services. We had elders coming in. We have parents coming in. If we started to support, it would be a matter of picking and choosing which ones get money and which ones don't. At this time, we...

At this time, no, we are not looking at a universal daycare program. I want to say that we actually have really subsidized, and I need to actually do some more work on the breakdown of how that looks like. We give money to the daycares directly to subsidize for it, so that they can have lower costs for children. That's based on if they are infants, or the age of the children. The younger the child, the more money daycare providers actually get. We give money to parents. If parents can't afford the daycare or subsidies or the daycare costs, they can come in if they are lower-income and actually...

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to recognize Ms. Arlene Hache, who is a good friend of mine and a mentor for many years, a lot of respect; and Ms. Katherine Underwood, who is here from Ryerson University. Welcome to the Leg.

The act does state that we have to have an administrator in place, so that position will stay until we get the new advisory committee initiated. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The competition for the position closes at the end of this month, and then we will be starting the interview process as soon as that's done, so we are assuming that the person will be hired before the end of this calendar year.

Mr. Speaker, I want to recognize the recipients of the 2018 Minister's Culture and Heritage Circle this morning. For the youth award, we have Miss Alice Twa, and her parents attending, of Yellowknife, on her behalf, her parents, Erin O'Rourke and Cameron Twa. Thank you. Our individual award went to Tishna Marlowe of Lutselk'e. Our elder award went to Joanne Tetlichi, of Fort McPherson. The group award went to Old Town Community Association of Yellowknife, represented by Lisa Seagrave, Rosalind Mercredi, and Dave Kellett. Our Minister's Choice Award went to the Designated Gwich'in Organization...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This one was the most worrisome for myself. My understanding is this gives the person $30,000 they could spend during the election period, usually a month, and then an extra $30,000 for a year before. This does impact people who live in poverty. Again, like I said before, we need to make these Chambers as accessible as possible. I don't know very many people who live in poverty who could come up with $60,000 in a year, so therefore I will not be supporting this motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair.