Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I talked about grandparents, single parents and people who want to go to work. One of the issues in Norman Wells and Colville Lake, ironically Norman Wells is an oil-driven economy and Colville Lake is a resource economy based on harvesting and trapping.
What can this government do to help young people with a daycare centre? How can we get those doors open? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker, We do have daycare facilities across the Northwest Territories. I know we need to improve certain areas. We have been working in the Member’s riding. We currently have three licenced early childhood programs in the Sahtu region. Obviously, Members are requesting additions to that as well.
Fort Good Hope has a daycare; Tulita, child development; and Deline has a pre-school. These are some of the areas where we have established early childhood centres. We continue to improve in those areas.
My staff, my department is more than willing to meet with leadership and stakeholders to develop these centres because we do have funding available. Those are some of the discussions we are currently having. Mahsi.
The Minister talked about the daycare centres and I appreciate the ones in Fort Good Hope, Tulita and Deline. I want to focus on Norman Wells and Colville Lake. If the funding is there, I want to ask the Minister if he can give me a commitment that prior to the writ being dropped that his staff will initiate meetings in Colville Lake and Norman Wells to act on this funding so that the daycare centres can be opened and these young people can go to work and go to school. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
In 2015, obviously these are discussions we’ve been having with Norman Wells to develop programs. My staff are working with community members from the Sahtu region, more particularly in Norman Wells, to open a licenced early childhood program within the Sahtu region as well.
Just last month the Norman Wells Land Corporation met with ECE and is considering establishing a daycare. Those are discussions we’ve been having and we are making progress in that respect, Mr. Speaker. Mahsi.
I do want to thank the staff in Norman Wells and the willingness of the Norman Wells Land Corporation to initiate this meeting with the Education, Culture and Employment department. I appreciate that, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask now if the Minister would redirect his focus and attention to Colville Lake where they also need a daycare centre. There are lots of young families there also willing to look at this initiative.
Will the Minister take a leap of faith and ask his staff to go to Colville Lake and look at ways they can bring solutions to establish a daycare centre for young parents, young people in Colville Lake before the writ is dropped?
This particular issue is not new to my department. My department has been working very closely with the community and has provided funding over the past several years with respect to the summer preschool programming. Just recently Colville Lake residents have expressed an interest in having licenced daycare programming, so at this point my department is working with Colville to identify suitable space availability in the community. So, we’re doing everything we can to push that forward and I’m hoping we’ll see some progress in expeditious timing. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the Northwest Territories there are eight health centres without full-time nurses. That’s a fact. Another fact: there are 11 communities without full-time RCMP members in that community. There are eight daycare centres that are not operating in the communities in the Northwest Territories. I’m just pointing out two in my region, Colville Lake and Norman Wells.
I want to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, seeing that we have two, can the Minister instruct the staff to work tirelessly to ensure that nobody else in Colville Lake has their doors open for daycare centre prior to let’s give a time date of Christmas, so the parents in those two communities can have a Christmas present?
Obviously, we would like to see a child development centre established in those two respective communities. My department, again, is working very closely with the community to have that established and ready to go. So, we’re working with community leadership to make that happen and it’s just a matter of finding that suitable space in Colville Lake and also working very closely with Norman Wells, the corporation that has shown interest, and we want to move forward on that. So, we’re doing everything we can as a department. We need to push that forward as best of our ability with our parties involved. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
