Mr. Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the government allocate from its existing resources additional funding to support existing daycare facilities and assist in creating new daycare facilities in small communities.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Just give us a second and we’ll circulate the motion.
Committee, the motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, colleagues. This motion is giving recommendations to the government to allocate from the resources that are already stated, additional funding to support some of our existing daycare facilities in the Northwest Territories and also assist in creating new daycare facilities in the smaller communities.
As I stated earlier, we have 10 communities without licenced child care services. In these small communities, the employment rate is not very high. Families are struggling with the high cost of living and child care. Young mothers and young fathers are trying to find work, and if they do, they certainly have to deal with the challenge of finding reliable babysitters. Sometimes they have to be left with family relatives to look after the little ones and sometimes those situations don’t always work out well. In these small communities there is certainly a high percentage of young people now having children, which inspires them, motivates them to work and do something with their lives. A lot of the young people want to work and do something with their life. Given the chance and given the support if it’s there, they will certainly make a go of it.
I’ve also experienced, in listening to young people who want to go to the Aurora College learning centres, yet they have problems with babysitters in the morning. Especially in these small communities, work is not on a continuous basis. There’s seasonal work and when there’s work these young people want to work because it’s only three or four months and they want to do something, develop their skills, put their ability to work in good terms so that in the future they’ll be hired again.
These young people need all the support we can give them. If it could be that the department could look within the existing resources to help the ones that now who already have child care services in their communities and also to look at the ones at the communities without licenced child care services in the North here. This is something that we identified in our discussions as communities without some of the services that the other regions have. It is a high priority. Small communities such as these ones have unique challenges, unique needs. These licenced child care centres do a lot. Even in Norman Wells they just started one up. It was going well. When it shut down, a lot of families were scrambling to find babysitters. Norman Wells has a high rate of people working with a low unemployment rate. The other nine communities are also in the same boat. I just want to raise that. The motion talks about a recommendation to allocate some of the existing funding in this area. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. To the motion. Mr. Hawkins.
Mr. Chair, after some great consideration and thought, and after his passionate comments provided by my colleague Mr. Yakeleya, I will be supporting the motion. Of course, I will be asking for a recorded vote. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. To the motion. Mr. Moses.
Mr. Chair, I think this does bring merit to the issue of daycare facilities in small communities. I know the staff understands, mainly because of the initial results from the EDI instrument that we were trying to address. Kids are going into school as high as 69 percent not developed. I think this motion speaks to that. It’s also an opportunity where we can support mothers, parents, which ultimately leads to parenting skills but it’s also an opportunity where we are able to monitor a child and allow this child, also, before they go into the junior kindergarten, to develop through play-based initiatives and interaction. It would be kind of a one stop shop, I guess you would say, for speech pathologists, occupational therapists, physio, audio, where we get all the children in one area where we can do the assessments on them and do the necessary programs and, I guess, treatment that they may need in the long run or kind of plans to develop. It also provides an opportunity to provide healthy food to the child growing up. It would be an opportunity for coordination of other early childhood programs and we talk about wraparound services in this Early Childhood Development Action Plan and this will be a great opportunity to address those as well. There are a lot of reasons that support this alone.
I know we are trying to take the junior kindergarten route, but before that, you heard colleagues speak about the prenatal to three and I think by providing this, just list off some of the stuff that I listed or really get base of support that this is something that the department really needs to take serious consideration of, not solely but working with the Department of Health and Social Services, which this action plan here clearly states that they have to work together.
We brought the motion forward in this department because I know there was a focus on junior kindergarten, but we also have to make sure that that is not the only focus in the small communities. We also care about the child’s development. You go right down to United Nations’ rights of the child 1991 proclamation. We go as far back as that. We have to start practicing those, as well, and start with this government. If you didn’t know already, I will be supporting the motion. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. To the motion. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, too, am in support of this motion. It’s been mentioned by a number of people. I think it’s also been mentioned by the Minister, but there is a big need in the territory for daycares, for new daycares. The Minister talked about junior kindergarten and in the same breath mentioned daycare. I know he recognizes that there is a need. We have some daycares, particularly in Yellowknife. We have existing daycares. I have spoken before about the impact that I think junior kindergarten will have on the profitability for the daycares in the city that exists.
We need to provide an increase in funding to existing daycares. One of the things that has not changed in many years, from what I understand, is the daily subsidy per child. The motion asks about assisting supporting existing daycare facilities. I think that is something that the department needs to look at. What is the daily subsidy? What is it going to need to be to support daycares to be profitable once junior kindergarten starts? It definitely is a different scenario when you have zero to three instead of zero to four. I certainly don’t want to see existing daycares fold. We have so few spaces now in the city of Yellowknife, for instance, that we cannot stand to lose any more daycares than we have already lost. In the small communities, we need to put money into creating daycares where possible. Certainly there needs to be community support. There has to be some sort of an initiative on the part of the community or the part of someone in the community to start a business, if that is what it is, but they need the assistance to get that started. That is what this motion asks for. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. To the motion. Mr. Bromley.
Mr. Chair, a couple of things. I certainly will be supporting the motion. I would like to note, as well, that some existing daycares will be in trouble as a result of losing four-year-olds to the government JK Program. Younger children that they are left with require a higher ratio of caregivers, so some daycare facilities will certainly become uneconomic and will have to close, leaving parents stranded and unable to work.
My second point is there is an important caveat here and that is this House has already directed the Minister to investigate universal daycare along the models of Quebec and do feasibility work on that. We might hear a progress report on that today. Who knows? On that basis, we have already directed the House to look at daycare for every community in the Northwest Territories at an economic rate. Certainly there is evidence from elsewhere that shows that it pays. In fact, it can easily pay for itself. The caveat is that this would be superseded by that. I expect that the Minister is going to come forward with a positive report on that fairly soon. In the meantime and in this case, I will be supporting this motion. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. To the motion. Mrs. Groenewegen.
Mr. Chair, I have questions and issues with this concept of universal daycare and daycare in every community and subsidizing daycares because the government is now going in competition with daycares and junior kindergarten. The economics of all of this just sounds a little bit sketchy to me. Mr. Chair is giving me a questioning look. If we are going to take away the four-year-olds, is that going to make all of the private daycares unviable so now we have to financially support businesses that are in the daycare business because the government is… We’re going to pay twice. Let’s put it that way. We are going to pay for junior kindergarten and then we’re going to pay because the zero to three age category needs some kind of subsidy because the staff child ratio is higher with the younger children. I know that. I actually built a daycare once. I ran a daycare once. I know about those ratios and I know about those economies. The more children you have, the more staff you need. It is not really a good money-making proposition at the best of times.
I’m not really sure about this. I mean, daycare in small communities, could I say that if you’re saying that there’s not much employment in those communities, like, who’s going to bring the kids to daycare? I guess some people maybe would. I don’t know. If there are people who do stay home and don’t work outside the home, isn’t it a great economic opportunity for those people to take a couple of children in if there are a few people working, if there are mothers working in the community, and if there’s a place like Norman Wells where they said there are so many people working that they need daycare, well, that seems like a really good business opportunity for somebody to open a daycare if they don’t already have one, and I don’t know what the impediment would be. Pardon?
---Interjection
Oh, okay, so it’s our Junior Kindergarten Program that’s going to make private daycare unviable. I don’t know. The whole economics around this just sounds a little bit different to me and a little bit difficult to understand. It’s a great idea, universal daycare, everybody can take their kids from zero to three then the school will take them from four to…
But to the motion, well, this is the motion. You’re asking this government to spend more money on creating daycare spaces. That is the motion. That’s what I’m talking about. Anyway, I can’t support the motion.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. To the motion. Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to the motion here now, I will be supporting it, but I don’t see why we need to support the existing daycare facilities. I’m not sure if the mover of the motion would be able to amend this, but the real problem that I see is in the small communities… I know in a lot of the tax-based communities like Yellowknife, Inuvik and Hay River it’s not an issue when it comes to daycare because you have the numbers of children to fill those buildings, but in the small communities you’re constantly losing money when you’re running a daycare because you might have one or two children in that facility yet you have to have at least two people to watch them. I’ve seen in the past, well, I’ll just use Tsiigehtchic for an example. Almost half of the children that are in the daycare program are children of the people that are running it. It’s a challenge, I know from past experience. In other communities, I know it’s really successful in Fort McPherson. We have in the neighbourhood of 10 to 20 people going to the Head Start program, actually, and that’s very successful and the people that run it are doing a great job there.
I think that we need to work with a lot of the communities that are having difficulties. As I’ve said, again, the cost of operating these facilities, I know it’s a big challenge for some of the communities. There are discussions of junior kindergarten, but you can’t put a price on these children. These children need a good education. We’ve seen it in the numbers that we get under education. All the presentations we get in committee, it’s very clear that we need to do something better and putting our children to school earlier, that’s what we need to do, so I don’t think we should be putting a price on that. With that, I’ll be supporting the motion.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. To the motion. Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much. It’s kind of like a big community motion built on using the word small communities, but I am going to support it, but only because it’s a recommendation at this point. Of course, committee will be wanting to have full discussion with government on it and I will look forward to further details as we move along on this motion.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. To the motion. Minister Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the Members for highlighting this as one of the priorities of this government.
These 10 communities that the Member is referring to, the one that that has been highlighted, this will obviously provide child care programming into these 10 communities that we currently don’t have any licenced programming, licenced early childhood programming. So we are capturing those 10 communities.
Part of the discussion I’m hearing is that we’re not providing or supporting these daycares in the communities. We are currently providing subsidies to these daycare operators in the Northwest Territories and currently delivering existing funding. I will just capture some of them. It is a start-up contribution, $340 per infant as a start-up cost for these infants for these daycare operators. Operations and maintenance funding is another one. Minor health and safety contribution, up to $10,000 per year that these operators can access. We also cover rent or mortgage up to 25 percent annually. There is also a Small Communities Initiative of $15,000 per year. The list goes on with the subsidies.
My department is willing to work with all the daycare and child care operators. That is what we have done in the past, will continue to provide those supporting mechanisms and we will continue to provide the support.
This is obviously direction to this government and we are currently delivering and providing those support mechanisms in place already and we will be capturing those 10 communities for early child programming. We are currently delivering it, we will be. So, Mr. Chairman, Cabinet colleagues will not be supporting this initiative at this point. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. To the motion. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a number of brief financial comments. The number that I have heard for universal daycares is somewhere in the neighborhood of $42 million in new money. This motion talks about reallocating existing resources. I would point out that junior daycare is reallocating existing resources and I hear, especially from the Yellowknife MLAs’ considerable heartburn, that in fact the reallocation has been done and the government should pay for everything. So, it is the issue of affordability, and we want both, we want both the daycare and junior kindergarten. I don’t know how you would propose to fund that, knowing that reallocation of resources has already been done on the junior daycare. This is a motion that has significant implications. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger.
