Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In follow-up to my Member's statement, I have a few questions for the Minister responsible for ECE. As I mentioned, there is no childcare in Fort McPherson at this time. I would like to ask the Minister: how much funding is available for childcare, for setup and operations? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is funding available, and we are trying to get people to know that, so I am glad to actually answer that on the floor. We have start-up funding, and it goes up to, I believe, about $25,000 just for starting their business up, and then we have health and safety funding on top of that. That is up to $10,000, and that is for making sure that you have the proper things, fire extinguishers, et cetera, that you need to actually provide services in a daycare.
We will work with any daycare provider that wants to be licensed. We need more, and we will provide whatever services that we can to support licensed family homes or centres. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Minister answered a part of this, but I will ask it anyway: is the department willing to work with a provider in the community to start a daycare before the school year begins?
Absolutely, yes. We want daycare providers in every community. Fort McPherson does have the Aboriginal Head Start currently, but it is only a couple of hours every day and it's not enough. One of the big things we need to do, though, in every community, because every community is different, is find out how many children might be interested. That's the critical question. Does it make sense to open up a centre if you've only got two or three kids in a community who might want daycare, or does it make sense to promote a licensed family home? We are more than willing to go in to work with their community to figure what would be best for the situation.
There is a big demand for childcare in Fort McPherson. A lot of people want to get back into the workforce. We are always trying encourage, especially women, to come back to the work force. I would like to ask the Minister: can someone start off out of a private home if there is no space available?
Yes. As a mother, even as a social worker, I think I would advocate to maintain that as it is. There are a lot of people. We do want people licensed. The ideal world would have licensed family care homes. We have grandmothers, and we have mothers, and we have like people, our sisters and stuff who are providing really good care. That means to me, as a mother and as a woman, that we need to be flexible in how we do that, so we don't penalize people for being unlicensed, but we do have additional support and financial support for people that are licensed. Anyone out there who is not licensed and figures that they could use the additional financial support, contact ECE. We would love to help you.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
