Jackson Lafferty

Clearly, the statement was made in this House that the Junior Kindergarten will be continuing this year and next year. Based on the funding that has been allocated to date, it will continue for this year and next year. That was in the statement yesterday. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. When I met with all of the school boards on May 23rd, I did commit to making some changes. Part of the changes, of course, is providing flexibility. Providing anything beyond 16 to 1 teacher ratio in their school system, the education authority will be provided a subsidy from my department. That is a commitment I have made. It is based on an average throughout the Northwest Territories.

There will be some impact, in some cases, where there is a high enrollment of students entering our school system. Those are some of the areas that we will continue to monitor, but at this...

I’m not sure how else I can say it, but there are documents and correspondence, e-mails that came to my attention from various stakeholders, and there’s a few of them. So we need to act on it. We can’t just ignore those concerns that are brought to our attention.

Again, it is during the life of this Assembly that it will be signed off. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I did answer that, I believe, last week. The recommendation from the committee has been addressed to my attention. The package is before me and there has been some correspondence that came in from various stakeholders as well. Even after the fact, the committee established some recommendations. I did commit to this House that I will sign off the final document during the life of this Assembly. Mahsi.

We are currently contributing upwards of $150 million to all the school boards so they can deliver the most cost-effective, efficient program delivery K to 12. We’re currently delivering Junior Kindergarten in 23 of our communities and it’s just a fraction of 0.01 percent of that. It is a public fund, so we need to have the best program delivery in the Northwest Territories.

This is an area that we will continue to push forward with 23 communities based on the EDI, the results that came in. What is before us is we are going to be re-evaluating our situation, our stance, and review the whole...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. That decision was made by this government to proceed to deliver to the 23 communities based on a two-year commitment that’s been made as part of the agreement that was agreed to by this government. So this year and next year the funding allocated will continue through those two areas. We will continue to work with the 23 communities. Based on the review, we will have to decide next year how it’s going to look and continue with the delivery to 23 communities in 2015-16 as well. Mahsi.

For the 23 communities, JK has been funded out of the $150 million budget. Those are the areas that we have discussed with the school board chairs back in May and even before that. We will continue to address that, even part of the review process that we have committed in this House in the 23 communities. This year JK is being delivered into our communities on an optional basis, this year and next year as well. We will continue to monitor those areas. Mahsi.

Mr. Speaker, as I stated, I have committed to providing district education councils anything above 16 to 1, we will provide a subsidy. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Mahsi. We’ll do everything in our power to expedite the process to sign off the document. Mahsi.

Mahsi. These regs have been before us for a number of years now, upwards of 22 years. So it wouldn’t hurt to wait another year during the life of this Assembly to sign off the final document where we capture everything if we want to have regulations that capture the legality issues that have been brought to my attention. Some of areas of concern within the clause were brought to my attention as well. So we need to deal with those kinks that have been brought to my attention.

We are currently working with the Department of Justice to deal with these matters. Again, I will be signing off during...