Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Lands. According to Section 6.5 of the Devolution Agreement, the GNWT assumes overall liability for the operating sites listed in Schedule 7, Part A.1 of the Final Devolution Agreement.
Could the Premier please provide the following information for each of the 13 sites listed:
amount of financial security currently held by the federal or territorial government;
the form of that security, e.g. irrevocable letter of credit;
the authority under which each security amount is held;
the expiry date of each security instrument;
the amount of security as set out in relevant water licences, land use permits, surface leases or other instruments for the specific site;
whether there has been an independent review of the liability; and
if there has been an independent review of the liability, what was that amount?
If there is a gap between the amount of security held and that which is authorized in relevant water licences, land use permits, surface leases or other instruments, does the GNWT still intend to take over the liability or will it exercise its right to not accept the site under Part 6.5 (d) to not accept that operating site?
How does GNWT plan to manage these liabilities and what are the plans to prevent any further public liabilities?
When does the GNWT intend to make public a list of financial securities held for the sites that it will manage into the future?
As of June 1, 2014, have any of the 61 sites listed in Schedule 7 Part E – Operating Sites (Oil and Gas, Industrial and Mining Dispositions) been transferred to the GNWT, and what is the status of the financial security being held for these sites?
[Translation] Mr. Speaker, I have a return to Written Question asked by Ms. Bisaro on May 30, 2014, regarding the GNWT funding provided to education councils and authorities.
The Department of Education, Culture and Employment allocates school contributions based on School Funding Framework, which determines allocations primarily based on the number of full-time equivalent students.
Later today, at the appropriate time, I will table “Enrolments and Contributions by Education Authority,” which provides total student enrolments by education authority in September 2013, as the determining factor in calculating 2014-2015 school year contributions. The “Enrolments and Contributions by Education Authority” document also lists basic school contribution funding allocations by education authority for the 2014-2015 school year, in total, as well as specifically for inclusive schooling and Aboriginal languages and cultural programs. Not shown in the “Enrolments and Contributions by Education Authority” document are additional contributions to education authorities, such as for extraordinary enrolment, student success initiatives and staff benefits that are distributed throughout the school year.
Because the Yellowknife education authorities are expected to collect school property taxes as revenue, the contributions provided to these authorities represents approximately 82 percent of the calculated amount as per the school funding formula. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document, entitled “Northwest Territories Economic Outlook 2014-2015.” Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I’d also like to table the following document, entitled “25th Annual Report Victims Assistance Committee of the Northwest Territories, 2013-2014.” Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document, entitled “Education Renewal and Innovation Support Documents.”
Also, further to my Return to Written Question 17-17(5), I wish to table the following document, entitled “Enrolments and Contributions by Education Authority.” Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have an accounting of potential costs of junior kindergarten implementation for Yellowknife Catholic Schools which I wish to table. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to table a letter from the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, the City of Yellowknife and Alternatives North addressed to the Honourable Michael Miltenberger, Honourable Bernard Valcourt, Honourable Gail Shea and Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, entitled “Responsible Ministers Decision on the Report of Environmental Assessment of Giant Mine Remediation Project, EA0809-001.” Mahsi.
Colleagues, pursuant to Section 5 of the Legislative Assembly and Executive Council Act, I wish to table the summary of Members’ absences for the period of November 5, 2013, to May 27, 2014.
WHEREAS the Department of Education, Culture and Employment (ECE) plans to roll out a new Junior Kindergarten Program in 22 communities in the fall of 2014;
AND WHEREAS in some of these communities there are well-established Aboriginal Head Start programs with only four students per teacher, delivered at no cost to NWT residents or the Government of the NWT;
AND WHEREAS Aboriginal Head Start programs will be impacted by the new Junior Kindergarten Program;
AND WHEREAS funding from ECE is being reduced in some education districts and allocated to others in order to implement junior kindergarten;
AND WHEREAS it is important to supply proper resources to support the play-based environment of junior kindergarten;
AND WHEREAS the success of junior kindergarten is known to depend on expertise in early childhood development;
AND WHEREAS hybrid junior kindergarten/kindergarten programs are potentially harmful to early childhood development;
NOW THEREFORE I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, that the Legislative Assembly strongly recommends that the Department of Education, Culture and Employment identify and seek new funding to support the implementation of junior kindergarten instead of reducing funding to any education districts;
AND FURTHER, that the department ensure that the Junior Kindergarten Program be professionally designed and delivered by properly trained staff;
AND FURTHER, that the Junior Kindergarten Program be oriented to early childhood development, not a hybrid junior kindergarten/kindergarten program;
AND FURTHER, that the department’s rollout of junior kindergarten be focused in communities without an Aboriginal Head Start program;
AND FURTHERMORE, that the government provide a comprehensive response to this motion within 120 days.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to first begin by saying thank you to the Member for Mackenzie Delta, who has brought forward some of his concerns. I appreciate him supporting this motion by seconding it. It’s an honour to have a community Member like him working together because we certainly see the issue as a whole in the sense that we all want good education programs for our youth. There’s no doubt in my mind that every Member here supports educational opportunities for our young people.
We heard clearly from the chair of the Aboriginal Head Start program that she is calling for a pause. Changes the Minister is directing are destabilizing Aboriginal Head Start programs.
I’ve been contacted by one community that has Aboriginal Head Start and they’re concerned about the effects that it’s going to change. They view this as federal money at risk. Not territorial money, federal money is at risk. They told me, in their words, how will the federal government keep funding a program that doesn’t have any kids?
Mrs. Erasmus had said, in her words, our eight communities it has our program in jeopardy. It just doesn’t get clearer than that.
It’s time to support the communities by giving them the tools they want. Every Member here supports that. All the Minister of Education has to do is ask. MLA Bromley had made this reference earlier, which was the fact that we’re very generous when it comes to education and health. Those are two program departments that we will give where we can and we’ll go the extra mile.
All Members want this initiative to proceed, but not in the manner it’s been designed. Time and time again I keep hearing the word “discussions,” these are the discussions we need to have. Frankly, you would think that if the department was steamrolling this initiative, they would have had these answers already.
Every time we stand up, we should be asking a question that is easy to answer. But no, it’s like they’re implementing a program that has been ill-advised, ill-designed, well-intended, but not thought out.
I know a lot of good people that are working on this program. I like the concept of this program. I think the work that they’re doing is amazing. But when it comes to the financial implementation of this program, you’re now having community against community. You’re going to have program against program. You’re going to have junior kindergarten in a small community like Fort Providence, my colleague Mr. Nadli represents, fighting the Aboriginal Head Start program for bodies. It just doesn’t make sense.
Mrs. Erasmus wants to talk, but the Minister isn’t answering the call. These types of things need to be sought, discussed and solved before implementation. It’s kind of like the old joke: shoot first and ask questions later. They’re implementing it and figuring it out after they’ve implemented it.
Just a minute ago, to MLA Bisaro, the Minister said the impact would be about 2 percent, but on page 9 on his fact sheets it says it would be somewhere between 0.4 and 1 percent. So that’s 0.4 to 1 percent. The Minister is changing the numbers on the fly. That alone should remind every single one of us that a lot of detail still must be thought out.
I could probably go at length and I would probably enjoy every minute of it, but the fact is what I want to hear from the Minister is they will stop taking funding away from school boards, they will fund this properly from the start. Everyone wants this to happen. We just want it to happen in collaboration between Aboriginal Head Start programs and Junior Kindergarten programs in small communities. We want large communities supported, and by golly, every single one of us wants to get behind this. We just want it done correctly from the start.
I will be calling for a recorded vote, so I’ll get that out of the way now. Frankly, I’m going to pause here because I know my colleagues have a lot more to add to this discussion. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. To the motion. Mr. Bouchard. Sorry, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, have many concerns about junior kindergarten. I know the communities I represent have signed up to take this on in the fall.
This year was the first year of a pilot project and Tsiigehtchic was one of the communities that did the pilot project. Because there are only two students enrolled, it wasn’t as challenging and they did receive $40,000 to help with the pilot project, which the communities won’t be getting next year. That’s the concern. That’s the issue here.
The communities need extra funding to help implement this, whether it’s for materials they need to carry out their education program that they’ll have in place or also for an assistant. Right now they have to use the budget they have right now to hire an assistant, buy the materials. That’s an extra strain on the system that they have in place. I know our teachers are confident that they can do this, but they need the resources. They need that extra funding. They need an extra assistant. We have two communities in my riding that are going to have 18 extra students with junior kindergarten into their class that they already have, which is close to 30 students for one teacher. I mean, it’s just not going to work.
This government supports education but we have to do it right. We don’t want to set these children up for failure. We want them to succeed, and the way that they’re going to succeed is we give them the proper resources. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. To the motion. Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will be voting in favour of this motion.
As I indicated today in my Member’s statement and I’ve indicated in the House before, along with all my colleagues here all the way from the north all the way to the south, this is an issue, this funding is an issue.
We continue to get e-mail after e-mail from our district education authorities, but there are more and more questions about how this will roll out, how junior kindergarten will be funded, how it will affect the Aboriginal Head Start program. In the community of Hay River, how will it affect the playschool program? How will it affect everything and how will it be funded?
The Minister keeps giving out information and then says surpluses are not up for grabs, the departments just need to find money within, but yet presents the information, a projection of surpluses. So, I mean, the information of a surplus being put out to the public is saying this is what they can use if they want to. But for the projection, why wouldn’t the department use an actual amount of the surplus? Then the surplus would be… You know, I’m getting information from my authority the fact that the surplus is actually not there in a cash amount. Some of those funds are being used to back up pensions, to back up other operations and being spent towards the end of the year. They’re doing a projection based on no communication with the authority, or very little.
When my authority had a discussion with the Department of Education, the Department of Education couldn’t justify where they came up with the number for their surplus. They just said this is the number we’ve come up with, but they couldn’t actually show the figures that figured out in comparisons. So the two of them couldn’t sit down and compare the numbers of how those surpluses are there.
There are so many facets of this junior kindergarten funding that is out there. We’ve heard the issues with Yellowknife, the funds being taken from there. The $7 million that’s coming out of operations to fund junior kindergarten and then it’s going to be put back into place. Now I’m learning that Yellowknife is going to get funding for 16 to 1, but then Hay River or Yellowknife or Fort Smith, some of the regional centres will be affected because our PTR is an average of the region, so that’s going to hurt us in the regional centres as well.
There are so many facets of this and so many difficulties that I ask all the Members on the other side from Cabinet, that this is not just an issue from one MLA or two MLAs, this is all of us here complaining that junior kindergarten needs to be rolled out a little bit differently. We need to pull this back, figure out how we’re going to fund it and go from there. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. To the motion. Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Speaker. It’s hard to know where to start. I’ve been asking questions all week. I haven’t really been getting answers and it has frustrated me, as I imagine this has come across in some of my questions.
I think I’d like to start by asking the question of how important is the Junior Kindergarten Program to the Minister, to the department, to Cabinet. I’ve been hearing it stated that it is very important. I’ve been hearing it stated it’s important to the school districts, that it’s important to the superintendents, that it’s important to teachers, that it’s important to parents. If I listen to the rhetoric, basically coming from across the floor, it’s telling me that this program is extremely important. If it is extremely important, then it should be funded to the level of the perceived importance, and it’s not being. If it’s as important as what we’re being told, then it should be funded not from within but it should be funded as a new program with new money.
Like my colleagues, I’ve been receiving e-mails and letters from constituents who are very concerned about the impacts that an unfunded Junior Kindergarten Program is going to have on school districts and on children in other grades within all our schools across the territory.
I want to just quote a quick bit about importance from a constituent. “Junior kindergarten is not receiving new funds and instead resulting in staff reductions and cutbacks in Yellowknife. The way the GNWT is implementing JK is contrary to the spirit and values being put forward in the ERI Framework, the Education Renewal and Innovation Framework. The GNWT should provide adequate new funding for this important new early childhood program to do it right.”
That says a great deal to me about what we should be doing in terms of funding this new program.
I’ve been expressing a lot of concerns. One of them is that the Minister, in almost every statement that he has made whenever he discusses junior kindergarten, mentions child care or daycare every time he talks about JK. Almost every time; I can’t guarantee it’s every time. I really am concerned about that. If the Minister and the department want to put a daycare program in place, then let’s do that. Let’s put a daycare program in place. If it is intended to be a Junior Kindergarten Program, then we should not be focusing on the 10 communities who, as the Minister says, do not have any kind of daycare. In my mind, that’s a huge contradiction, and I think the Minister is confusing one subject with the other. I am all for universal daycare, and I do support the Junior Kindergarten Program, but I am extremely fearful that we will end up with a Junior Kindergarten Program which basically is a daycare program.
There have been concerns expressed about Aboriginal Head Start, and I have also done that in the last while. The comment was made by Ms. Erasmus earlier this week that a school is not the right place for four-year-olds. The school is a structured environment and no matter how much you try to make a kindergarten classroom more like a home environment or make it more like a play space, it’s in a school, and as she pointed out, bells are ringing, students are moving back and forth, there’s a lot of noise. Four-year-olds don’t need that kind of environment. Aboriginal Head Start, on the other hand, does provide the play-based environment and does have the facility that allows for that. Yet, we are saying Aboriginal Head Start doesn’t matter. We are saying we are going to junior kindergarten and basically compete with Aboriginal Head Start.
As it was stated in another e-mail that we recently got, why are we not putting more money into Aboriginal Head Start and complementing the Aboriginal Head Start programs that already exist in our eight communities? I don’t see that that’s on the department’s radar, and they seem to want to put JK in regardless and ignore the fact that there’s a successful Aboriginal Head Start program already in place.
The other concern I have with the implementation of junior kindergarten, and I asked the Minister this question yesterday and got no answer, but there’s no indication that there will be funding for resources for these classrooms. Some of the kindergarten classrooms, because it’s going to be a combined junior kindergarten/kindergarten classroom in many small schools, some of them will have resources already, but you’re adding four-year-olds, and that’s a much younger age. Well, it’s a year. It’s a year younger than kindergarten, but still, it’s a lot younger as kids grow. Basically, you’re talking about one-quarter of their life, and they need different resources, sand tables, water tables, big blocks, little blocks. They need all kinds of things to play with. They learn through play, and most of our kindergarten classrooms are not set up like that.
There is no evidence, in my mind, that the department will work with existing programs. I haven’t heard from the Minister words that make me nice and comfy with regard to that. Because of that – and it’s not just Aboriginal Head Start; there are other preschool programs that operate, not so much in small communities but certainly in the regional centres – there is no indication, in my mind, that the department is willing to work with those programs to ensure that they stay solvent. Many of them operate as businesses and the department says, yes, we’re going to give them money and we’re going to let them convert their spaces from four-year-olds to infants. Maybe so, but my understanding is that in a daycare, for instance, the four-year-old space is the most lucrative, and daycares count on those four-year-old spaces to give them the most revenue and allow them to be able to take in infants and so on.
I spoke earlier in my questions about the pupil-teacher ratio and I want to reiterate, I am very concerned that, as the Minister said when I asked him the question, we are working our way back up from 13.8 to 1 PTR to 16 to 1. I really don’t think that’s going to increase our quality of education. We are just now starting to get higher numbers of graduates from high school. Do we really want to go back to what we had 10 or 20 years ago when we had few graduates, and we’ve been worried about the graduates from high school for a very long time? We’re starting to move upwards and onwards and we’re starting to get a greater number of graduates. Increase the PTR in our schools, as the Minister indicated earlier, and all we’re going to do is reduce the quality of education. Reduce the quality of education, kids are not going to be engaged, they’re not going to get the encouragement that they need, and end result, they’re going to drop out with fewer graduates is what’s going to happen.
To all these things, I am really concerned that we are putting in place a program that is going to bring our education system down. I believe we have a good education system. I believe that we have a very high quality education system. We’ve got a few problems but it’s basically a good system. But by doing this, instituting a new program without new funding, it’s simply going to bring down the quality of education that we currently have.
The motion is pretty straightforward. It asks for new funding. We put a new program in place in almost any other government department and we look to put new funding in there. We bring a new facility online, and I’ve been screaming for a couple of years that when we bring a new facility online we need to make sure that we budget for O and M funding to make sure the building can operate. This is a similar situation. You’ve got a new program starting with no money.
The motion refers to Aboriginal Head Start, and I’ve covered that already. I think, pretty much, in terms of the questions that I’ve asked in this last week, I think I’ve tried to get across my concerns about funding, I’ve tried to get across my concerns about the type of and quality of junior kindergarten/kindergarten that is going to be put in place. I hope the Minister has heard those words and has listened to the numbers. I don’t get a sense that he has anything in mind except to forge ahead, and I would urge him to seriously consider the concerns from all Members on this side of the House, concerns from every region of the NWT, as was stated by Mr. Bouchard, and seriously look at the recommendations in this motion and changing his mind.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. To the motion. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will be supporting this motion. We started originally with the recognition that we really needed to move forward strongly and quickly on the early childhood development front, which is also handled by this department. We said we wanted to focus on the ages zero to three. The Minister chose to focus on junior kindergarten, so he developed a lot of support for that, and we saw the potential for it. It wasn’t that we disagreed with it. We had different priorities, but we went with the Minister’s priority, but with the important recognition that all of the research shows junior kindergarten can be very successful only, though, if it’s based on quality, and what is that quality? What is their definition of quality? It turns out it must be presented on an early childhood development basis. In other words, not a school program, not a hybrid program. It must be an early childhood development, an early childhood education program. Secondly, it must be delivered by early childhood education experts. There is a strong sense that the Department of ECE is failing on these critical points. Again, we have inconsistent and partial information that has led to confusion. So nothing is very clear on this.
This sense leads to the conclusion that the failure is derived from a lack of funding, or the recognition that with the implementation of vital programs like Junior Kindergarten, new dollars must be provided.
While these children are small, as we have heard from the Aboriginal Head Start Council, the space and material needs are large, they’re critical and they’re expensive. We have to ask once again why did we do a pilot study in three communities if we weren’t going to provide an evaluation of these pilots for our reference? One has to ask, is it a lack of money? I mean, we’ve heard nothing on it.
Constituents have pointed out that the process itself is cheapening to junior kindergarten, the idea, the concept, the proposal. Where are the evaluations, where are the consultations, the funding that recognizes the potential to see value that a Junior Kindergarten Program could provide?
We need to put funding in place, keep it an ECD-based program delivered through early childhood education professionals that are required for quality. Failure has the potential to harm our youngest, as the research shows. Not only could it be neutral, but it can harm some aspects, and I repeat that based on research, while having impacts as proposed on the education presently being provided to the older children.
In October we called for a feasibility study of universal child care. Today we are contributing to the failure of the child care facilities we do have and, again, as we’ve heard from my colleagues, this remains unaddressed.
Aboriginal Head Start, it remains out there, tested, developed, evaluated and improved. Current proposals undermine this worthy effort and yet we have the opportunity to integrate with them and right away address some of the quality issues that we have.
This is a long list and my colleagues have elaborated on it. So I’ll stop there, but I will be supporting this motion. I hope the Minister, I’m not sure, if he doesn’t hear us today, I’m not sure what it would take. So, thanks to my colleagues for bringing this forward. Taima, c’est fini, mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. To the motion. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Of course I’d like to thank the mover and the seconder for bringing this to a debate here on the floor. For the record, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I do support junior kindergarten, but I don’t expect that people would understand the funding model that we heard today as being one which is acceptable to the people, and I agree with them.
We have heard over the past week terms like turmoil, we’ve heard tug-o-war, we’ve even heard the word poaching, just to name a few. These are all in relation to the funding model of the JK delivery in the NWT.
We’ve taken a very positive initiative that has had much promise and we’ve started with an ill-conceived funding model. Again, on this side of the House, we’ve heard from the various school boards, we’ve heard from the trustees, we’ve heard from the parents, we’ve heard from the day home operators, we’ve heard from the Aboriginal Head Start stakeholders and the taxpayers that we’re all gravely concerned that ECE is not listening and they’re not listening to our concerns. This whole initiative from day one was touted as being good for all, but financed by a few. The few I’m referencing really means mostly the larger municipal school boards and authorities, and of course, Yellowknife taxpayers.
Let’s put all numbers aside because sometimes with using too many numbers it will confuse the listener and we actually lose the message that we’re trying to bring them today. As we all heard, the department does not have any money. We heard that today, we’ve heard that a number of times today, but they saw some surplus money in various authorities and they exercised their statutory authority. Stealing, poaching, if you will, Jedi mind trick, I don’t care what terminology you use, it’s clear, the money is reallocated from one pot of money to another and apparently under the law. But now what is the fallout if this should happen to the larger school boards and authorities? It’s clear, we’re going to have increasing classroom size, we’re going to have huge loss of jobs, and quite frankly, we can’t even quantify how many jobs will be lost. We’re not going to have increased pressure on our special needs students? I disagree. If you take budgets away, it will affect someone else and I don’t conceive the fact that our inclusive schooling students will be not affected.
The district that I have most concern with, and this hasn’t been mentioned today, is that these forced changes to the mill rate will be affected and they’ll be affecting the school boards here in Yellowknife and to the Yellowknife taxpayer. As I see it, the taxpayers in Yellowknife have already had their taxes stripped from their hard-earned money and it’s going to the public government and also they’re taxed by the mill rate. Just for a quick reference, the taxes that are being paid by Yellowknife residents are roughly about 20 percent of the budget of the two school boards here in Yellowknife. So, clearly, the removal, the reduction, call it poaching of the much hard-earned surpluses, will no doubt have a huge impact and this will have a huge impact on the triggering mechanism. I’ll say this again here, a triggering mechanism, because these surpluses are being taken away. So the school boards themselves are going to have to find ways to mitigate those losses and the only way to mitigate those losses is triggering a higher mill rate. That mill rate triggering mechanism could be as high as 20 percent, according to some of the calculations that we’re getting.
The cost of living affects everyone in the Northwest Territories and our capital city is no different. So how can the Minister look in the whites of the eyes of the Yellowknife taxpayers and say, hey, we want your money because I don’t have any myself. That’s what we’re hearing here today. How can the Department of Education expect the Yellowknife taxpayers that have their taxes and their mill rate and their surpluses used somewhere else because that’s exactly what we’re telling them. But moreover, how does the Department of ECE expect the Yellowknife taxpayer, who is already double taxed are now being set up to be triple taxed, once off their earnings, a second at the current mill rate and now we’re triggering a future mill rate increase, all the while to fund an ECE ill-conceived funding model. Is this fair? Is this reasonable? I can tell you that the taxpayer is saying this is ludicrous. It’s an insult to the taxpayer, and to suggest this triple taxation plot could conceivably start this fall. The irony is that the taxpayer is going to be paying all of this and the taxpayer here in Yellowknife will not see the benefits of JK for three more years. Is that fair? This is a fail.
I don’t care how you cut it, as great as JK is, Junior Kindergarten, as I said before, it is a great program, whether it is optional or not optional, this department, this Minister has only one option here today and that’s to listen to the people of the Northwest Territories, listen to these people on this side of the House, listen to your school boards who are sitting in the gallery and listen to the taxpayer. We bring here today a motion that is fair, that is reasonable.
Minister, are you listening? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. To the motion. Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You’ve heard a lot of comments here from my colleagues. You’ve heard them for the last two weeks on junior kindergarten. You’ve seen it in the news reports, we’ve seen it by e-mails and heard it on the radio.
On November 17th this Legislative Assembly collectively as 19 Members did outline in our priorities that early childhood development was going to be one of our priorities. It took a while to get started, but on May 30, 2012, we passed a motion to get this early childhood development implemented. We’re just over two years now and we’re still waiting to see what initiatives are taken on with the Department of Health and Social Services, Education, Culture and Employment is doing another thing, and that’s implementing the Junior Kindergarten Program. Two years later, we are still finding issues with this, the public is still finding issues with this and we’re at a point where we have to make some big decisions because we are in June, and in some communities school is going to be starting in August. We’ve got a couple of months to decide how we are going to move on this.
What gets me is in the motion that Mr. Hawkins is bringing forward, he’s asking for new funding for this new Junior Kindergarten Program. It’s kind of baffling because right now we are going through an Education Renewal Initiative and we don’t even know where those dollars are going, which programs are getting what kind of dollars, what programs are going to get cut. It’s really confusing with this department. It’s not only junior kindergarten but early education renewal. Where are the dollars coming from? It’s not even August, September we’re going to have to start making some decisions. Education authorities are going to get their budgets and talk about a school funding formula. There was commitment made in this House that we would change the school funding formula, but how is it going to be divvied up?
Mr. Speaker, what baffles me is that with the pilot reports that we did get, there was no evaluation… I shouldn’t say the reports that we did get, but the pilots that happened, there have been no reporting, there has been no evaluation on those pilots. Actually, I think in one of the communities where the pilot was being run, we heard from one of the staff working in there, she was quoted saying, “I’m an educator, I’m not a babysitter.” A lot of concerns are coming up from that, even with our Beaufort-Delta Education Council sitting down meeting with them. They’ve even expressed concerns, written a letter and I will make some references to what their concerns are.
As I said, there has been no evaluation, no report on the pilots that have already been done and yet this fall we are going to implement them in 23 communities. Mr. Bromley made a good suggestion in question period about how maybe we could just focus on some of the small communities that need it and leave the communities with Aboriginal Head Start program be.
It’s pretty plain and simple. Having it optional is also baffling, because I know the Minister has seen it, some of our committees have heard it, about the development delays in these communities. If we are seeing development delays, a program like this shouldn’t be optional. It should also be mandatory in some of the small communities, saying families, get your kids into these programs. We’ve got to get them prepared and ready for school.
I know it is a play-based program and that begs to differ in terms of resources we are going to have for some of our small communities.
There’s another motion I wanted to discuss and that was done earlier this year and that was training for early childhood education workers. Right now, we don’t have that in place. In that motion, it mentioned developing some type of program in the Aurora College system. We haven’t really seen much movement on that. Inuvik would have been a great place. We have a facility that’s not being used 100 percent and we have that new Children’s First Centre that’s going to be there, which brings to point meeting with the executive director of the Children’s First Centre. She was concerned about the amount of students that were going to be taken out of Children’s First Centre who are aged four for junior kindergarten, put into the school, and supporting that is the Beaufort-Delta Education Council saying they are going to have students that are going to go beyond the legislated 16 to 1 pupil-teacher ratio. That 16 to 1 pupil-teacher ratio, as the Minister alluded to earlier this week, is something he is committed to. So he’s committed to having that 16 to 1 PTR. In Inuvik, when we go above that, where are the resources going to be to help our community? It’s not only Inuvik, it’s the regional centres and eventually it’s going to come to Yellowknife.
However, when we look at the statistics, we have seen them in any department, whether it’s development delays, graduation rates, we always see higher stats in the small communities and they slowly drop as you get into regional centres where there are better resource centres for people to access. It’s the same with graduation rates, less in the small communities, but as you go into the regional centres and into Yellowknife, it gets higher. So there’s definitely a concern and a need to get these programs into the small communities.
I’ve been on this file right from the beginning of this government, being chair of the Standing Committee on Social Programs. We got a lot of good feedback. We did have some meetings with experts in junior kindergarten as well as early childhood development. Where I see the best need and the best way this program is moving forward is we’re getting it into the small communities and giving these kids and their families a chance for further development.
I don’t really want to see a delay in this program, even though we’ve got a pilot out. It would be nice to see an evaluation and a report on the pilot. I don’t want to see a delay, because there are kids out there who need the help and assistance to developmentally grow, Mr. Speaker.
A couple of highlights from some of our stakeholders up in the Beaufort-Delta. They mentioned there would be challenges to our existing kindergarten, especially with the multi-level graded classrooms and multi-level developmental stages that the children are going to be having going in there.
A major concern is a lack of funding, where that funding is going to be coming from. As I mentioned before, the Education Renewal Initiative, we don’t even know where dollars are going with that and how that’s going to be laid out.
I just want to highlight a few of the bigger challenges that they talked about. The physical classroom space for additional bodies, the physical classroom space for additional play resources such as books, play stations, equipment, rest spaces, the lack of curriculum for junior kindergarten. I know it’s play-based, but what type of things are you going to be focusing on? If we don’t have trained early childhood educators, how do they know where the training needs to be in writing, in speech, in cognitive movement, in physical activity? Those things need to be considered.
The lack of resources for purchase of additional play resources, furniture, resting mats. A big one is potty training. You get these four-year-olds that might not even have been potty trained. Do we have enough staff to keep it clean? Who’s buying the diapers if diapers are needed? What about community busing services and students with special needs? As I mentioned, there’s different levels of development in children. If they are coming from the small communities and then make it even further, let’s say families coming from one of the surrounding communities and going into Aurora College and their child might not be at the level that some of the kids in the regional centres or here in Yellowknife might be at. That could be more detrimental than effective and will they get the attention that they need?
The motion brought forward is a good motion. It talks about funding, it talks about trained staff and focusing on communities that don’t have the Aboriginal Head Start program. I support all those areas.
Just like I said when I started off, what baffles me is we’re asking for new funding but we don’t know where the dollars from the Education Renewal Initiative are going.
Collectively, we can still continue to work together. I know we’ve got a lot of organizations out there who have given good feedback as well. I don’t think delaying it is going to help. Any kind of activity right now for age four, especially in the small communities, is going to be beneficial to them. The Minister also made a statement yesterday about if a low-income family or a double-income family who’s working has to put their child in daycare, then it’s almost like one person is just working to pay the daycare, but if we have the Junior Kindergarten Program, the four-year-old goes into the Junior Kindergarten Program and it might save the family some funds.
We do have a high cost of living here in the Northwest Territories, so there’s something that works in that favour as well. In Inuvik I know we just increased prices of child and family services. As a result, some families had to make a decision whether to continue working or stay home to take care of their children because they were just working to pay the fees. This might be one way to offset that.
However, the motion, everything I agree with. I would just like to know how the funding is going to roll out. As legislators, we represent not only our communities and our constituencies but we represent all of the Northwest Territories that goes from the smallest community to the largest, which is Yellowknife. I think making a decision on moving forward, we’ve come a long way and there is still a lot of work to do. This is something that we need to resolve by the end of the 17th Legislative Assembly.
Mr. Speaker, I will be supporting the motion. Everything in it is things that we’ve heard. I haven’t seen more of an outcry of this program being rolled out than from people of the public. I would like to thank the mover and the seconder for bringing the motion forward. I’m glad to see we have the big city moving the motion and having somebody from a small community seconding the motion. So it goes to show that it’s needed in all our communities across the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. To the motion. Mr. Nadli.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I, too, rise in support of the motion. I thank the mover and the seconder for coming up with this motion. This motion is basically about money and they ask that the government identify and seek new funding for this major initiative. At the same time, it has to be professionally designed and based on early childhood development, not so much hinging on kindergarten. It should start with communities that don’t have Aboriginal Head Start that are in existence already.
The other part of this whole motion, too, goes back to the very fundamental concerns that I have raised in this House before, and that’s the distinction between communities and larger centres. I think it’s an acknowledged fact that in our small communities, our students struggle, whether it’s graduation rates or moving on to post-secondary educational studies. In some respects, for a student to reach that level, they often have challenges. It goes back to just how it is that they’ve managed to challenge themselves. They are trying at least to get baseline education fundamentals engendered in them so they can succeed at a later stage.
So the bigger issue to this is: Is the Education Renewal Initiative trying to address that? There’s going to be a level of public consultation. We all understand the education system that we have has to adapt to the globalization of the economy and the labour pool that each country has, including Canada. At the same time, what needs to be reiterated is that the JK initiative, it’s currently contemplated that, as it is, it could jeopardize the Aboriginal Head Start initiatives that have been successfully managed in the communities for the past 17 years.
What needs to be said is JK is indeed part of the Education Renewal Initiative. It’s a major initiative, so if it is a major initiative, something of the magnitude of a paradigm shift, there has to be money associated with this initiative. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Let me start off by saying thank you to the Members for speaking up for JK. It is a very important subject of this Assembly. I am truly looking forward to the next business plans because I’m hearing that there will be an influx of funding for ECE. So I’m looking forward to that.
[English translation not provided.]
Mr. Speaker, in summarizing, as I stated in Tlicho, in a perfect world where resources are limited and there are no competing priorities, I would have asked for an additional $7.4 million to introduce a program as important as Junior Kindergarten and important to the Members as well.
Our financial landscape is very different today. That is not the world we are currently operating in. The Minister of Finance, in his budget address, appealed to us, all of us, to live within our means and exercise fiscal prudence, to take a hard look at what we spend our money on now and to see if we can do better at re-profiling some of it.
That is our responsibility as a government and department and we did just that. Money has been re-profiled to be spent more effectively. This front-end investment in early child programming like JK will pay off in the long run, is an investment in education. The choice before us was to either wait several years or more until the overall fiscal situation improved or look to the $150 million already invested that the government provides for our education to see if we can re-profile existing funds to make JK happen for families and children who need it sooner than later.
My recent commitment at guaranteeing a PTR for each educational authority will, in fact, add new dollars to this already significant $150 million being invested. The PTR top-up is not insignificant to the case of Yellowknife, around $1 million for each board, depending on enrolment. This money will help offset the contribution educational authorities make to junior kindergarten across the Northwest Territories. It will also assist them in implementing junior kindergarten in their own schools.
The following facts show that $7.4 million re-profiling can be sustained without jeopardizing any existing students and here’s why. The research shows the NWT provides more government funding for students than any other jurisdiction. That is a key fact, because even low PTR means low funding for students. Our PTR is not the worst in the country. In fact, we are very close to being in line with the Canadian average.
Our Collective Agreement for teachers is the envy of many teachers across Canada. Despite an increase in funding in our educational system over the last five years, graduation rates in small communities have actually decreased, which means that more money doesn’t necessarily give you the better outcomes.
Lastly, many of the education authorities do carry substantial surpluses. That has been highlighted in this House, which is the taxpayers’ money after all.
On the issue of junior kindergarten programming needing to be professionally designed and delivered by properly trained staff, I can advise the NWT integrated kindergarten curriculum for four-year-old and five-year-old children will be professionally designed and developed based on current sound, solid research and developed for our northern context. It was built on the foundation of our culture curricula, the Dene Kede, the Inuinnaqtun, to help young children to become confident and proud of who they are and where they come from. It is based on honouring the fact that each four-year-old and five-year-old child is very different and has, therefore, unique gifts and strengths as well as learning styles. It is based on the foundation that children learn best through play and hands-on experimental learning.
It is my department’s goal to see that JK and kindergarten classrooms are inviting, safe, active, fun and stimulating spaces where children can develop a sense of curiosity about the world around them.
Education authorities already have the responsibility to ensure all the staff they hire within their schools have the experience, the skillset, the ability to work effectively with and teach the children of all ages and abilities. Junior kindergarten will be no different.
Of course, the minimum requirement to teach in a school is a bachelor of education degree, in our schools. Our society cannot lower this standard as…(inaudible)…certified educators in front of our most precious resources, our young children. Education authorities understand how important it will be to hire qualified teachers, educational assistants who have been trained in early childhood development and education to work in both JK and kindergarten classrooms.
On the issue of Junior Kindergarten Program needing to be oriented towards early childhood development and not a hybrid Junior Kindergarten Program, I can assure you that the NWT curriculum views children’s development along the learning continuum, not a prescribed pace adhering to the ages and stages. The learning is designed to allow children to learn and develop at a pace that best suits their needs, not under the old-fashioned model of rows of desks where all children are required to do the same activities at the same time being led by a teacher.
The NWT junior kindergarten curriculum and program is developmentally appropriate for four-year-old and five-year-old children, and it’s grounded at the latest early childhood development research and practices. My department consulted with internationally acclaimed early childhood development experts such as Dr. Stuart Shanker and Dr. Jane Bertrand.
On the issue of rolling out JK in communities without the Aboriginal Head Start program, my goal as Minister is to ensure that all parents and families have a choice to consider JK as an option for their child. In three of the communities, the Aboriginal Head Start program is also delivered in our NWT school system. JK is not about creating competition for the Aboriginal Head Start program, it is about creating options for parents and children. The implementation of junior kindergarten will not change the way Aboriginal Head Start programs are funded.
The Aboriginal Head Start program has received federal funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada since 1997. According to that agency, the funding contracts are renewed annually. For the last three years, the Public Health Agency of Canada has been collecting information to support the renewal of Aboriginal Head Start funding; however, no decision has been made whether funding will continue in the ’16-17 fiscal year. At this time the Public Health Agency of Canada can guarantee that the Aboriginal Head Start program will receive funding until March 31, 2016. For 17 years the Aboriginal Head Start program is mandated to provide programming for three- and four-year-olds. JK, the junior kindergarten, will be available to all children both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal across the Northwest Territories.
We are proud to say that 23 out of 29 small communities committed to delivering junior kindergarten starting this fall. I would like to say thank you, mahsi, to those individual communities that are taking on this important initiative. I am very much looking forward to their success.
Since this is a direction to this Cabinet, the Cabinet will be abstaining from the vote.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. I will allow the mover of the motion to have closing remarks. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s interesting; they’re abstaining on this motion, maybe because they don’t have the numbers. It’s just to reference a point.
I worry, frankly, that the Minister has misunderstood the issue. He’s too quick to comment and point out and reference experts, experts none of us would deny. Frankly, I don’t care what the experts are saying about JK because that’s not the issue. It’s about the implementation. I believe the expert Shanker had said by age four it’s already too late anyway, so are we accomplishing the goals? Not one Member on this side of the House spoke against JK. Everybody here is in favour of the merits, the quality programming, the opportunities they create for people in small communities, the fact that we all believe in helping the child get the best start to their future. You don’t have to look any further to facts such as our graduation rates and ask ourselves could we do things better. This is exactly the thing we want to be part of.
[English translation not provided.]
…a child growing up for the future. We want to be part of that future.
The government wants to make 14 grades out of 13 years of funding. Now, I didn’t know when this Minister started apprenticing under David Copperfield and made the Statue of Liberty disappear, but how is he going to make more programing happen with less money per child? It’s not necessarily meant to be an insult. The reality is it’s impossible. It’s an illusion.
MLA Moses had talked about the impacts of Children’s First Society in Inuvik. We’re three months away from the implementation of this program and the Minister says we still have to have discussions. The rollout is in three months. We should be having the end of discussions about this at this point. I don’t expect the Minister to know everything. I think that’s impossible and not fair, but we’re asking pillar-style questions. These are what hold the building up. Every one of our questions is about the cornerstone of its success. What about the funding? What about the training? What about the availability of space? Why are you taking money away? Every single one of these are very important questions. Perhaps the Minister knows things he hasn’t shared with us; I don’t know.
There is a net loss to large districts, and by the way, that’s not just Yellowknife. That’s also potentially Hay River, potentially Fort Smith, potentially Inuvik. We cannot allow this to happen. The other thing that starts a worry is what’s going to happen down the road. We just don’t know. The public is quite clear on this. I would hope that the government would understand that. We support funding students properly from the start everywhere they live. There is no surprise or shock to that. No one has said anything to the contrary.
Recently, the NWTTA president came to us and told us about the workload of teachers. Now the Minister of Education wants more out of them. I think they’ve already given their share and he wants more.
Pick a single community initiative. We’ll get behind this. Show us where you need support. We’ll be behind this. I keep saying it. I don’t know why the Minister isn’t listening. It’s not about the merits of junior kindergarten; it’s about the implementation plan.
The Minister will go on about his statistics. Yes, we’re not the worst. We’re just barely above the last one. He talks about the highest cost per student that they implement in our schools. We’re the most expensive jurisdiction. These things make sense. May I remind the whole Cabinet, when it’s their idea and their initiative, they always seem to find money. They always do.
This is the people’s initiative. This is not a Regular Member’s initiative. This is the people’s initiative and we are just here to support the voices of the people that have been coming in loud and clear. The bottom line is we want to help, not reduce. We want to support, not take away.
It has been loud and clear. There is no way to offset this by playing a shell game one school board against another, one community against another. I’m reminded, as I’m going to finish here, of a famous quote from somebody we all have heard of, Stephen Covey. He always says, begin with the end in mind. If our children are the most important, will the Minister of Education let us help him? We want to be part of that solution. Let us begin with the end in mind. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. To the motion.
Question.
RECORDED VOTE
Question has been called. The Member has asked for a recorded vote. All those in favour, please rise.
Mr. Hawkins, Ms. Bisaro, Mr. Moses, Mr. Bromley, Mr. Blake, Mr. Dolynny, Mr. Bouchard, Mr. Nadli.
All those opposed, please rise. All those abstaining, please rise.
Mr. Beaulieu, Mr. Abernethy, Mr. McLeod – Yellowknife South, Mr. Lafferty, Mr. Ramsay, Mr. McLeod – Inuvik Twin Lakes.
