Statements in Debates
School boards are now developing their budgets for the next school year. One of the tasks that they have is to decide on their staffing component. If they are going to release teachers, they need to be released by the end of March. If they need to hire teachers, they need to know that as well. If the money is not going to be available until the fall, how are school boards going to plan for the implementation of junior kindergarten this fall?
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, if the preparation of the budget for the last fiscal year was a sprint, quickly compiled after the election, budget preparation for the next fiscal year has been a marathon. We started in September and, despite intensive negotiations and some movement on both sides, we are at an impasse. This afternoon, I want to talk about some of the reasons we are stuck.
In my last Budget Address, I talked about some important and unfinished business around the mandate. We Members of the 18th Assembly do not have a common fiscal goal. This lack of consensus created division...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I still have a bad cold so I may have to stop and cough. Mr. Speaker, several national anti-poverty advocacy organizations released reports in November. The news for Canada as a whole and the NWT in particular is pretty grim: the fact is one in five children live in poverty; food bank use is going up, and so is the use of emergency shelters. The latter point was starkly confirmed when CBC North reported in the fall that emergency shelters are so full that people are being turned away. Their options are to ask people to sleep in RCMP cells. We know that some...
The district education authorities and school boards were looking at making a cut of 3.6 per cent to their budget for the next school year in order to fund junior kindergarten from within. Now the government is fully funding junior kindergarten, will this cut be necessary?
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of ECE. Mr. Speaker, in his statement today, the Minister said, and I quote, "we will make the money they need to implement junior kindergarten available to them when it is needed." Could the Minister please tell me what the phrase, "when it is needed" means? Thank you.
I did not hear a definitive answer to my question. So schools are now planning. School boards in Yellowknife are holding open houses this month to talk to parents about coming to their schools to access junior kindergarten, and they have a target number of involvements in mind for each of the school boards, so there are lots of pieces of this puzzle that are known. So can the boards count on having this funding in hand or committed to the penny by the end of March?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, my questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment and they are based on a statement that he gave today. I just want to confirm, to start with, that the provision of JK in every school in the Northwest Territories is mandatory as of September of this year. Is that correct? Thank you.
Thank you, colleagues. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Delegates in Inuvik looked at indicators suggested by the Minister's staff that will tell us whether progress is being made in six areas of poverty reduction, including housing, food security, and income assistance. Unless and until there is significant government investment in poverty reduction, the indicators will show that nothing much has improved and some people are worse off, as the national reports reveal. The band aids we now provide are not a solution; they trap people in poverty, sometimes for generations. It's well past time for that to...
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm going to resume my questions to the Premier because I didn't feel that I got an answer to the question that I asked, so I'm going to repeat the question. There is going to be an additional $33 million required for operations and maintenance of long-term beds when they're available. What money will pay for this operations and maintenance cost? Thank you.
Thank you, Premier. The problem is that healthcare costs are forecasted to rise significantly, and I gave some numbers in my Member's statement especially around the provision of longterm care to our aging population. That's on top of home care. What is the plan to ensure that healthcare funding is adequate to meet our needs? Because I don't see that this deal with $7.4 million in it will do it?