Robert Bouchard

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Committee, general comments. Ms. Bisaro.

Clauses 61 to 70.

---Clauses 61 through 70 inclusive approved

We’ll go clause by clause. Clause 1.

---Clauses 1 through 11 inclusive approved

Does committee agree that Bill 4, Health Information Act, is now ready for third reading?

---Bill 4 as a whole approved for third reading

I’ve received information from one of the organizations, the Head Start program, that basically they had been informed that they are now a zero to three not a three/four, and I guess they’re quite disturbed in the fact that they have been running this for over 20 years. They were asked to realign after the Department of Education has done that.

How can the Minister justify that we’re changing the focus to zero to three when these organizations were established to do three to four?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last week I had questions for the Minister of Education on junior kindergarten. I want to follow up with some questions about the funding for other programs that are going to be affected by junior kindergarten.

Has the Department of Education looked into the effects of taking four-year-olds out of the systems we have? I’ll use Hay River as an example, obviously. We have a playschool, we have Growing Together and we have a Head Start program. These are programs that are affected by that, so I’m wondering if the department has looked into the effect of the enrolment in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank my colleagues, Mrs. Groenewegen and Mr. Miltenberger, for bringing forward this motion. They were the mover and seconder of this motion, but we did discuss this topic in Caucus several times and it has been done with heavy heart and consideration of a whole bunch of different issues.

I will not be supporting the motion because I feel that it’s not something we should be doing. I went home, talked to my constituents and a bunch of them had concerns and issues with it. The other thing is that as a member of the Board of Management here in the...

I appreciate that they would have to do this, but what is the mechanism that the government uses to make sure that this is being done? Obviously, we’re hearing those concerns in our community and it’s not being fulfilled. The territorial NGOs that have agents in Hay River are not being represented.

What is the government doing to make sure that these mandates are being fulfilled?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask some questions to the Premier about the NGO. It looks like he was very well versed in the NGO field today and I had some questions about he talked about the mandates of NGOs and that they don’t look at that.

I’m wondering, because I’ve heard some concerns from the Hay River NGOs that are in that area, that the territorial NGOs that are set up and established in Yellowknife are not providing funding out into the regions.

Can the Minister please provide me some direction on how those NGOs’ mandates are looked at, and if they’re providing a territorial...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my experience, nothing is free in this world. The point is that the funding for the junior kindergarten is going to be from within and now it’s affecting other organizations, other communities that have Head Start programs. My concern is that these Head Start programs and other organizations will fail. I’m just wondering: Has the department completely assessed this in their plan to launch junior kindergarten both in the small communities and in the larger centres?