Jackson Lafferty

When it comes to delivering Junior Kindergarten in the 23 communities, obviously the teachers will be teaching our kids, our children in our school system, and the teachers go through various university degree programs, and part of the programming, of course, is early childhood as part of their degree program. We may not have a specific early childhood specialist teaching our kids in our school system, but we do have qualified teachers in our communities that are teaching our kids.

Mahsi. That is exactly what we’re doing. My staff is currently meeting with YK1 and YCS, just through discussion on their overall budget as well. We are doing the same thing with South Slave school board as well. There are discretionary funds in there, as well, and there are various areas of funding that we found to be flexible. The flexibility is there that we can work with. At the end of the day, it is up to the school boards to decide if they can allow that to happen and so forth. My staff is diligently working with the school boards, whether it be Yellowknife and Hay River, Fort Smith, the...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Part of the Junior Kindergarten, obviously, is to roll out the Junior Kindergarten in all 33 communities once it is all a phase three approach. Right now, we’re delivering 23 of 33 communities. When we talk about early childhood development, we want to give options to the parents. There has been great work that is early learning programming in Hay River. I’m fully aware of that, and we are working with that, as well, but we have to keep in mind that some of those programs in the communities are fee for service, and this Junior Kindergarten, obviously, is a great advantage...

We have done our consultation or engagement part of the process. We’re following through with what’s been brought to our attention, whether it be a recommendation from various organizations. Not everybody is in agreement or there are pros and cons of particular regulations coming forward, so we want to make sure that it is the right product. It’s a large document for the whole Northwest Territories and along with Nunavut; we still have to work with Nunavut on this particular piece of work. But then again, it will be delivered during the life of this Assembly and I’m willing to sign off before...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the Member is correct about the Safety Advisory Committee did some work in this area and it is almost 22 years that we haven’t made any changes. There have been several attempts to update this particular act, the regulations, but they were unsuccessful over the past nine years.

What’s happening now is that recommendations came forward and there should be more engagement, consultation with the general public, the industries and various organizations representative of industries, businesses, governments and unions. So that did occur and now the recommendations are within...

Mahsi. There are various avenues. As I stated, there is a hotline on the website and also on the phone and the response team that consists of the regional representatives from my Department of Education, Culture and Employment to bring any concerns, to bring any ideas on how to deliver this particular program. So any other forms of communication, there’s always, as I stated before, room for improvement, how we can best communicate to the parents, to the teachers, to the children that we are teaching. So we’re doing what we can to be transparent and be accountable for the best delivery of this...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. What I said was that there are no major issues or complaints brought to our attention. With any rollout of various programs or projects in the communities, there is always room for improvement. Those are just some of the areas that come into play where teachers ask certain questions about the JK delivery or an avenue that they can turn to. There is ongoing communication dialogue between my department, DEAs and DECs and, also, working with various organizations that are currently delivering the Junior Kindergarten program. I’m a firm believer that there needs to be an open...

Mahsi. I stand by how we can work closely with the daycare operators, the preschool operators, all of those operators in the Northwest Territories. Mahsi.

Mahsi. I’m glad the Member raised the profile where 10 communities are without licenced early childhood programming. It is true; we’re providing options for the parents to have access to this different programming. There are also other programs such as Head Start and other early learning programming in our communities and in our schools.

At the same time, with any new programming, any new implementation or rolling out of various programs, there’s always a re-evaluation of our situation a year after, two years.

This is a three-year phased approach and every year, obviously, we will be re...

Mahsi. When it comes to whether it be family day homes, the daycares, we’ve made some changes already. There’s been some recommendations brought to our attention by those operators and we’ve listened to the operators, we’ve heard their concerns, we’ve made some changes. From here until we deliver to all the communities, we’re going to make those changes along the way. We have done so and we will continue to do so. Mahsi.