Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Earlier today the Minister read into the House an Early Childhood Development Action Plan update, but what caught my attention was, within his update, iPads for new parents. Now, during this time period, since he made this announcement, I went back and looked at the main estimates, looked at the budget for this fiscal year and I was unable to find any line entry with respect to this as being an initiative under the ECD Action Plan.
So, could the Minister indicate to the House how many of these iPads the department is purchasing, what’s the total cost of this initiative and the distribution strategy? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. This ECD, Early Childhood Development Framework, overall does fall within that. We will be distributing iPads to new parents so they can have a tool that they can use with their newborns or children as well. That information was part of the action plan that we talked about last year, as well, and the money has been identified.
There are around 500 mini iPads that we’ve initiated as part of the overall plan. The overall cost of the iPads is around $160,000. These are some of the ongoing costs that we’ve identified.
We’ve also had, within our department, individuals that have been working on this with particular stakeholders as well. We are, in March, doing a pilot project where we’re going to roll out at least 100 mini iPads and then full distribution in August of this year. Mahsi.
Thank you. I do appreciate the Minister’s work on the ECD plan and I’ll be looking very favourably at those numbers in due course. Ironically imbedded in today’s statement the quote is “These iPads are the techno baby bags of the future.” Now, I have to smile a little bit because the words “baby bags,” it’s well documented within ECE that there’s been a lot of year-end splurging in the past of baby bags, getting rid of budget dollars near the fiscal, March 31st, year-end.
Can the Minister indicate to the House, is this just another splurge technique to get rid of funds? Thank you.
I can assure the Member that it’s not. Since 2013-14 and also ’15, we’ve been allocating funds towards this particular programming, mini iPads for new parents, and this is very important for the parents so it can provide increased access to early childhood development programming. Not only that, some of the parents also share with us and told us that they need help in understanding and tracking their children’s developmental milestones, providing humanization, nutrition information, recalling safety alerts. These are some of the areas that have been shared with us, and also the language apps within the program. So, this has been in the works for the last couple of years now and finally we’re at the stage where we want to distribute it. We’re ready for it in March and then August. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
We’ve heard from the Minister there’s been lots of work, allegedly behind the scenes, in preparation for these distributions of iPads. As indicated in the release, they’re going to be full of childhood apps and resources, but can the Minister indicate to the House, is he prepared to provide committee and Members the research and the evidence-base behind what we’re doing? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, my department is willing to do that, provide the detailed information on these particular mini iPads that will be distributed to new parents. We’ve done a lot of research not only on these mini iPads but on the overall Early Education Development Framework. The action plan we’ve developed over a three-year period to deal with the 22 recommendations. This is part of the recommendations that have been brought to our attention, that we need to provide tools and resources and that’s what we’re doing. So we’ll provide that information, Mr. Speaker. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Mr. Speaker, thank you very much. Thanks to the Minister for his response. We know the old saying, what you spend you should be able to monitor.
With that, can the Minister indicate what performance measures are with this investment? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, this is the very reason why we’re doing the hundred mini iPads in March, March 31st, just to have a review of the testing of the technology, the cost factor and the rolling out of the program, where we may run into some obstacles or developing some programming of apps and so forth and we do have a monitoring mechanism in place as well. The Member was referring to how we evaluate and monitor, so those are areas that we have established, as well, for this particular area and also other projects in play. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Time for oral questions has expired. I’m going to call a 30-minute break.
---SHORT RECESS
Mr. Beaulieu.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to return to item 6, on the Order Paper.
---Unanimous consent granted
