Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions today for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. There is a lot going on at Education, Culture and Employment these days, lots of change, lots of action plans, and as part of the Early Childhood Development Action Plan, last week the Minister made a statement and he announced the start of a wage supplement program. He told us about the program last year, and according to the Minister’s statement, the first payments of the wage supplement were made on February 13th, so just last Friday.
Daycares and preschools struggle to make ends meet. My questions go to the Minister. I would like to know how the department arrived at the amount of the wage subsidy that they are giving out to the ECE staff. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. When we first introduced the grant, the staff grant with the stakeholders across the Northwest Territories, we did our research. We found out that we have one of the lowest paid workers, early childhood workers across the Northwest Territories. We want to give them incentives for them to pursue higher education, even as far as certification, diploma degrees and even masters’ programs so they can come back to our organizations and work for us. We wanted to provide some incentives, so we have had research done and talked to a number of stakeholders. Those are the results we came to from input from the general public. Mahsi.
I hope the Minister was stating or suggesting that he did some consultation with daycares and with preschools in order to try to arrive at a reasonable figure. The fact that we have the lowest paid early childhood educator workers suggests to me that we have daycares and preschools that struggle to make ends meet.
So I’d like to ask the Minister, second of all, the Minister seemed to indicate, and I think he indicated in his statement that this grant or this subsidy, whatever you want to call it, has to go directly to the staff person. Does it go there and does it have to go there? Thank you.
Yes, that is part of the plan. The staff grant will go directly to the staff. As you know, some of the staff have worked over 20-plus years. This will be an incentive for them to be more committed and further their education if they want to. We provide the incentive for them primarily focusing in those areas. We provide the funding directly to the staff so there’s no implication on organizations, whether it is expenditures or budget planning process. This has been already indicated. We spoke with numerous workers, as well, and they are fully aware that this money is available to them. It’s based on applications and we’ve received a majority of applications already and we initiated some of the payments last week. We will continue to do that, Mr. Speaker. Mahsi.
Thanks to the Minister. So, you know, we are now adding some to the wages to some of the early childhood educators and that’s a great thing. If we have the lowest paid workers, we really ought to be doing something to increase their pay. But I’d like to know from the Minister how that is intended to assist daycares in their overall expenses. I don’t believe there’s been an increase in the daily subsidy to daycares for quite some time.
So I’d like to ask the Minister, how does assisting the workers with their wages help the daycare with their costs of running their business, and when was the last time there was any kind of an increase in the daily subsidy? Thank you.
As I stated, we’ve done a variety of research across the North. That also includes the daycare operators and early childhood workers as well. Based on the results that came back… We provide funding to the daycare operators, whether it be the mortgage, whether it be other areas of subsidy for them to operate, whether it be day homes, even at daycare facilities.
The early childhood workers, as I stated earlier, are one of the lowest paid wages across the country but more so in the Northwest Territories, and this is one way of attracting more individuals to pursue early childhood worker programming to develop in those areas. That’s the very reason why we’ve initiated the staff grant programming for this particular area. Mahsi.
Thank you Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Speaker. I’ll repeat the question that I just asked the Minister. When was the last time that the daily subsidy for daycares and preschools was increased? Thank you.
I was going through my notes; I don’t have that specific detailed information. I will provide that to the Member. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
