Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize some Pages. I didn’t get an opportunity yesterday to recognize Anne Thomas. I don’t think she’s working here today, but there are a number of Pages from Frame Lake. Anne is one of them. Today I believe we have working here for us Jeff Harbin and Aaisha Hashi, and I’d like to compliment them on the work that they’ve been doing for us for the last, what, three weeks, I guess.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Education Renewal and Innovation Initiative is a huge undertaking and an admirable action on the part of the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. I appreciate the work that they have undertaken, that the ERI team at the department is doing. The work and the resulting renewal are necessary. There are changing trends in education and we see poor results from our current approach to NWT education, particularly in the Alberta achievement test scores and statistics around graduation rates for our students.

The Minister tabled the Education Renewal Initiative...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We’d like to deal with Tabled Document 1-17(5). I would like to just mention that Tabled Document 4-17(5), NWT Electoral Boundaries Commission 2013 Final Report will be left on the Order Paper. We won’t deal with it today as we have a motion pending that was deferred yesterday. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. The Minister speaks to research that talks about junior kindergarten and kindergarten and the benefits of that, and has been pointed out by Mr. Bromley many times and myself a number of times, the science also, and the research particularly, supports the larger gains that are made when we provide the early childhood programs for zero to three.

If we do implement junior kindergarten, it’s going to be a very costly venture. I have no idea what the estimate of the amount of money that’s going to be required, but if we put junior kindergarten into every one of our 49 schools...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are also addressed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I want to follow up on my statement and discuss a proposed action within that Education Renewal and Innovation document. I talked to it in my statement that it seems that the department and the Minister are suggesting and fairly firm on going forward with junior kindergarten. The document that we have that was tabled talks about poor learning readiness. I’d like to reiterate my feeling in my statement that we don’t get learning readiness if we start at age four; we get it if we...

Quality early childhood programs with trained early childhood educators available to children from birth will guarantee the development of the child that is now missing in many of our NWT pre-schoolers. If done right, it will benefit both children and families. If the Education department is serious about supporting student success, then ECE must work with Health and Social Services and re-profile the money earmarked for junior kindergarten to early childhood development. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I, as well, want to start out by thanking the members of the commission, Justice Smallwood, Mr. Furlong and Mr. McCrea. I think they were charged with a very difficult mandate, and as members of the Electoral Boundaries Commission, I think they did do a good job.

We’ve heard from Mr. Bromley. I’m sure we will hear lots from other Members in the House on the three recommendations that are before us. I have to ask, ask myself, and I have to ask it out loud: What are we trying to achieve? The answer, in my view, is that we’re trying to achieve equity and parity of voting...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for the opportunity to speak to this motion. It’s unfortunate that I won’t have the opportunity to speak to a motion for 18, and I want to say that I believe there are Members in this House who did want to speak to the motion for 18 and that there are some Members that do support that option.

I want to just repeat many of the points that Mr. Dolynny just made, but I think they’re valid and they bear repeating. First of all, and I said this in my remarks earlier, 19 seats gives us the largest number of overrepresented ridings of all three options. We still have one...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We wish to deal with Tabled Document 4-17(5), final report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ll try to be brief, but I did say in my opening comments that I support making the decision of a commission binding, but there have been a couple of extremely valuable points raised within the last few minutes. I do think that this suggestion deserves some careful thought. We are tired after four and a half hours, which I agree with whoever said that it was an extremely valuable time, was an excellent debate. Just the thought that one of the reasons we don’t have debates like this is because we pit one side against the other and our procedures and processes don’t really...