Julie Green

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...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I didn't hear an answer to my question. My question is whether the school boards will still be required to use their own resources to implement junior kindergarten as they were required to do prior to the budget being announced last week, including a cut of 3.6 per cent of their K to grade 12 funding. Is this cut still going to be necessary now that full funding for JK is in place? Thank you.

Is the Minister aware that hiring and layoff plans need to be in place by the end of March? Money will need to be in place to make those decisions. Is the Minister aware of that?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Premier. Despite the efficiencies that may have been realized, the health budget is growing again this year by $8.9 million, of which Ottawa is paying $1 million in extra funding to the whole budget. What I still am not understanding, even with forced growth, not new initiatives, the health budget is going up. That's without the big push of taking care of our elders. What additional efficiencies are possible to meet those extra costs? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you to the Premier. Adding another $33 million to the operations and maintenance budget of the Department of Health would be a very considerable increase over what they are spending today. How will the government decide on cuts, efficiencies, taxes, co-pays, to raise this money? Where will this money come from?