Thank you, Mr. Speaker. WHEREAS one of the goals of the 17th Assembly is “healthy, educated people free from poverty;”
AND WHEREAS one of the priorities of the 17th Assembly is “supporting child care programs to help parents become or stay employed;”
AND WHEREAS the “$7 per day” daycare program in Quebec has been shown to decrease poverty by cutting in half the number of single parents on welfare and increasing their after-tax income by 81 percent in the first decade;
AND WHEREAS the child poverty rate in Quebec is now half of what it was before the “$7 per day” daycare program was started;
AND WHEREAS the universal daycare programs in Scandinavia have been shown to decrease poverty;
AND WHEREAS the “$7 per day” daycare program in Quebec has been shown to improve the life chances of women and the poor and to build a better quality labour force;
AND WHEREAS the “$7 per day” daycare program in Quebec increased the number of women in the workplace by 22 percent;
AND WHEREAS focusing on early childhood development and education from infancy to three years old has been shown to greatly increase a child’s chances of success in school and later in life;
AND WHEREAS the daycare programs in Quebec and Scandinavia are run by people who are trained in early childhood development and education;
AND WHEREAS poverty rates in the NWT are unacceptably high, with more than one-third of single-parent families living below the poverty line;
AND WHEREAS the current daycare system in the NWT does not provide enough spaces and is not affordable;
NOW THEREFORE I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Sahtu, that within the next 12 months the Government of the Northwest Territories conduct a feasibility study on putting in place universal, affordable child daycare run by people trained in early childhood development and education, similar to the systems in Quebec and Scandinavia;
AND FURTHER, that the Government of the Northwest Territories provide a response to this motion within 120 days.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to bring this motion forward with my colleague Mr. Yakeleya.
We’ve all heard now about the recent assessment of the Quebec model of daycare, the benefits it has enabled and the positive return on the investments financially, socially and economically. We also know this system is not really universal and is not perfect, yet it’s been a hugely positive factor in the social and economic progress of this jurisdiction.
The Scandinavian examples, when you examine them, speak clearly of the success these longer and comprehensive programs have enjoyed.
Here in the NWT, Education, Culture and Employment does have a program, called Income Assistance Child Care Benefits, but hardly anybody uses it. The issue is not lack of demand. The issue is very few people are eligible and the system sets up too many barriers.
The income support title of the program sums up the problem. Child care benefits are viewed like a welfare program that is just for people who are unable to help themselves. We don’t handle everything like that. Health care is available for everyone and so is education. Can you imagine applying for income support before taking your kids to see a nurse or to school? Daycare is a supporting component of a modern health system and a modern education system, so we should handle it the same way. Daycare should be available for everyone and affordable for everyone, no questions asked.
Just over a year ago we improved our current system by bumping up our subsidy a bit and trying to make the application for such support a little less onerous and demeaning. I appreciated that effort, but it falls far short of the child care program with providers trained in early childhood development and education that is needed and is being called for here.
One of the ongoing issues is, of course, the debilitating costs of child care, often several hundred or even thousands of dollars per month. ECE support is slow, meaning the opportunity for jobs or education could pass you by while you try to seek it. It is not consistent because child care is typically paid monthly, but if your child is sick or away for some days, you still pay the costs for those days but ECE subsidies are deducted for that time.
Under our current policies, there is a highly variable level of care that children receive. ECE support is for child care business or institutions that typically do not have a required standard of professional training for their providers. Recently I heard the case of a father with several children who said he sent his infant to a child care facility in town here where the staff, a young woman, said she had to have the baby take a “time out” period because the baby squealed whenever he was excited about something and needed to learn not to do that. The young care provider said to the father, “Can you imagine having to put up with that squealing all day?” The father wondered: Is this okay, and is this acceptable treatment of my child?
The NWT clearly needs a skilled labour that affordable child care can create while we spend millions on income support without really reducing the need for it. Experts agree, and evidence shows, that high quality child care with trained providers would help mothers pursue careers, ease family stress, reduce poverty and improve success in school. Benefits that today remain unattainable for most.
Speaking of the lack of child care, Susan Prentice, a child care researcher at the University of Manitoba, says, “The kind of strain and stress and worry and cost, with all its personal and social consequences, is enormous in this country and largely invisible to policymakers. It’s tragic for children and families and it spills over into our economy and our civic life together.”
A young parent recently said, “Thank goodness I was living in Alberta to pursue my post-secondary education because they provided child care subsidies, one of the reasons I did not return to the North until my children were of school age.” The bottom line, continuing the quote, “If you want to retain population, there must be some sort of benefit other than northern living allowance to keep us here.”
Another resident, Chelsea McNaughton, gave the following report, “I never fully understood how terrible the child care subsidy in the NWT was until I moved to Alberta. I even remember writing two different MLAs while I was a single parent and working full time.” And she went on to say, basically she didn’t receive any joy on that front. She goes on, “In Alberta, you are automatically accepted for three months while they process your application, so you can start working or going to school immediately. I think it’s important to give a shout out to social programs when they actually work.”
Mr. Speaker, we will hear about the great things that ECE is planning and the enhanced support of the current child care subsidy, but here are people for whom it isn’t working. The Anti-Poverty Strategy folks, early childhood development experts, people pushing these strategies all call for some form of public child care available at reasonable cost and provided by trained workers, noting the benefits pay for the cost of the program and then some.
We are talking here about the most precious components of our lives, Mr. Speaker, our children. This motion calls on the government to take a serious and close look at the experience out there and do the feasibility work for a workable model of public and affordable child care in the Northwest Territories. I look forward to the comments on the motion. I will be calling for a recorded vote and opportunity to summarize at the end. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. To the seconder of the motion, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to thank Mr. Bromley for bringing this motion forward and also the Members for considering it. I would like to say that I support this motion because it makes sense. The issue of affordable daycares in the Northwest Territories has been an issue for some time. There are daycares here in Yellowknife where a mother who is single or married, a mother has to pay $43 a day to put their child in a private daycare centre, if the mother or the parents need to go to work to support their family. A licenced daycare, Mr. Speaker, is between $40 and $41 a day.
In some of our smaller communities, we don’t even have daycare centres. In my community in the Sahtu, we had an employment rate of 44 percent in 2009 in Tulita. Deline had a 42 percent employment rate in 2009. The average income in Deline is $33,000 for a family. Fort Good Hope has a 44 percent employment rate. In Fort Good Hope 27 percent are single parents. In Deline they have 35 percent single parents. In Tulita there are 32 percent single parents, and 42 percent of them working. When I broke it down a little further in the stats from the territorial government, there are more mothers working in the small communities than the fathers. More mothers that are working means that they have children, single parents, they need a place where they can bring their child to. While they’re well trained…like Mr. Bromley said, well-trained staff with a good income and some spaces in the community to support the families, support the young mothers.
I support this concept of doing a feasibility study and report back to us, work with us across here, over here from our own constituencies, and see if a $7 universal, affordable daycare can work in your community. There are a lot of people in the communities who have done a lot of good work to get daycare programs in their communities. They’ve fundraised, they’ve lobbied and they sold cookies. They did whatever they had to do to get the funding, and good for them.
This report is telling us to look at a feasibility study. The results have been proven. They’ve shown that in Quebec and Scandinavian countries that this type of project, this type of initiative does show the benefits and the results of government putting in funding for a public-supported program that is reaping good benefits especially in our small communities where there are lots of single parents. This will help them. If there are high unemployment rates in the communities, mothers who are wanting to go to school or seeking employment or seeking to go back to school, they have a place where there is a secure place that they can bring their children and they can contribute to the community.
In closing, I want to urge the Members and Cabinet to look at this. I know Mr. Bromley said the Minister has done some work along with Cabinet in regard to helping the mothers and helping the young families who are going to school, who are going to work, and there is some movement into this initiative. This one here tells you to look at the feasibility, look at this concept. It’s been proven in Quebec and Scandinavian countries, that this is something possible, and if we did it, this is what I’d like to focus our priorities on within the next couple of years of this government: To look at where this type of project will help the mothers with affordable daycare in all our communities, and the government can play a big role in the success. And you know? We’ll all be heroes for all the people that we’re going to help in our communities.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. To the motion. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank Mr. Bromley for bringing this motion here today, and I’d like to thank the seconder, Mr. Yakeleya, for allowing debate. Thank you very much.
I think everyone had a chance to read the Globe and Mail article, and I think that talked about that $7-a-day daycare program in Quebec. I can tell you, it did generate a lot of, I guess, good conversation, even with my spouse. We went back and forth and said what if. What if, back then when our kids were younger, we could have had daycare for $7 a day. And I’ll tell you, it was interesting conversation. We looked back at how many thousands of dollars we spent in daycare, if we could find daycare. That was the question. There was no daycare 20-some years ago. I’m starting to date myself here, but it’s unfortunate that’s the case. I for one am very, very curious as to where this motion will take us. Really, what it does is take us on a road of let’s just look at it. Let’s just do a study. I know I’m not a big fan of studies, but this study I’m going to let slide and say I like this study because it opens up a whole new realm of looking at things.
We do some great things here in our government – we all know that – and I think we’ve got to pay some credence to some of the great stuff that we do. I don’t want to overcloud that issue, but we need to take a look at what this study means financially. That’s where I’m really coming from with the support of this. We’ve got to take a look at what will it cost us, because the models that we’re comparing are large markets. Quebec, Scandinavian countries, those are fairly large, I guess, population bases. We’ve got a small population base. I really want to see what this study will do to shed a light on what does it mean for us in the Northwest Territories, and for that, I will be supporting that motion to see what the financial implications will be.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. To the motion. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am going to support this motion. I fully support the concept behind universal, affordable daycare. Mr. Bromley spoke to many of the positives that have come from universal, affordable daycare in other jurisdictions, and the research, in my mind, proves the value of an early childhood daycare program. Just reading from the whereases, it decreases poverty, it increases after-tax income, decreases the child poverty rate, it builds a better-quality labour force, it increases the number of women in the workplace. All those things are things that would benefit us in the NWT, and we know that the need is great for the benefits that I’ve just quoted. We also know the need is great for daycare spaces. We have definitely not enough in Yellowknife. There are very few of our other communities who have daycares to begin with, never mind enough spaces when they do have one.
Members have often spoken about early childhood development, and we’re in the process of revising the Early Childhood Development Framework. We have put quite a bit of focus on early childhood and on our children from zero to five. It’s really important, in my mind, that we have trained educators working with our children, particularly from zero to three, but from zero to five as well. It’s been proven that if you put the money and the effort and the good quality child development in children from zero to three, it pays huge dividends later on in life, particularly in school, but also in their life as they grow up to be adults.
Quebec’s experiment has been proven to be successful. They’ve got a few difficulties and they’re not insurmountable, but it is an extremely successful program. And I want to say that it costs a lot of money. I think Quebec’s cost is something like $2.2 billion on an annual basis. Ours wouldn’t be anywhere near there, I’m sure. We are a much smaller population. But I do want to say that the Quebec experiment proves that for every dollar that they spend, they get back a dollar and five, so it’s a money-making operation.
If we don’t go study this and implement this particular program, we could continue on with what we’re doing, and we are putting some money into early childhood development programs, but I feel that they are not necessarily coordinated. We have two departments working on it and they are working together. I give them credit for that. But I don’t think we have an across-the-board consideration and focus on early childhood development that early affordable daycare would give us. Some of the programs that do have daycare are of perhaps an unknown quality. We do have licenced daycare but we also have home daycares and, yes, they’re regulated but are they going to have the trained people looking after our children from zero to five that we want and that we need?
Mr. Bromley has spoken to the issue of our need for workers, and I totally agree. We are going to need, particularly in areas where development is going to be occurring, and the Sahtu is one area for sure where we’re going to be needing more workers. This program will put more females into the workforce, more mothers into the workforce, and it will provide us with more skilled workers. We want to keep that work in the North. At the moment, we have to go out to get many of our skilled workers. This kind of a program will free up people who can work and we will be able to keep that work and those dollars in the North.
We know that the Quebec model works and we know that we are a different jurisdiction. We’re much smaller, as Mr. Dolynny said. We have a different culture here. Therefore, the need for a study. We cannot take the model of Quebec or the model of Scandinavia and implement it right here. We need to look at what will work here. I know it will work. It’s just how we’re going to implement it.
One last thing I want to mention, I don’t think anyone has mentioned this before, but one of the things that we are constantly hearing is that our population in the NWT is decreasing. One of the benefits of this program in Quebec is that their birthrate has increased. The Finance Minister is always looking for more revenue. That’s one way we can get it and an extra $25,000 from the feds for every new child that we birth.
So in closing, I support the motion. I think it’s time for us to look at this, I know the need is there, we have a successful model to work from. We need to just, as you would say, get er’ done. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. To the motion, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess I can go along with looking into this, but it sounds like a very, very costly thing and there are, maybe call me old-fashioned, but there’s a few words that are being used here by my colleagues that, kind of, you need trained educators to look after our babies from zero to three. I just have a mental picture of somebody going from the daycare to the hospital and taking the baby out of the nursery and taking it over to the daycare. I don’t know. What about moms or what about parents and dads and moms that want to stay home and look after their kids? When you start our kids off at school at five years old and now we want pre-kindergarten and all-day kindergarten and then you’re in school and then you go from school to university and you go from university to work and then life’s hard and then you die.
Whoa!
---Laughter
If we want to start at zero, you want to be starting off in school and trained and educated at zero. Anyway, I don’t know. I can go along, for the interest of political expediency and for some of the good arguments, like Ms. Bisaro does raise a good argument. I probably have a son and a daughter-in-law that would have had more kids, but daycare is expensive and they both have careers and they both work. They probably would have had two or three more if… I shouldn’t be speaking like that, sorry. Very self-serving from a grandmother’s point of view, but perhaps there are families that would consider having a larger family if there was universal daycare available. That argument I can agree with, but there were other things that were said. The anecdotal story about the child squealing and that somehow having universal daycare is going to put these angelic workers into these programs, I don’t know.
I don’t agree with everything that’s been said here, but I will support the motion on the understanding that we are only looking at this because I think the cost, we’re going to find out, is extremely prohibitive. When we talk about the communities where they have low unemployment rates and everybody needs to go to school or go get a job, let me suggest that in some of those communities the economy is not there presently to be having people take their children to $7 a day daycare because there aren’t jobs in those communities. So are you going to have people drop their kids off for $7 a day and go home and do something else? Do you have to work to take advantage of this program? I don’t know; there are a lot of questions. I hope the study isn’t really, really expensive because, to be honest with you, I think the answer we’re going to get will show that it’s cost prohibitive. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. To the motion. Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This government’s been doing some really proactive work in this field with early childhood development and looking at the investment that we have been putting forth over the last couple of years. We’re working on this Early Childhood Development Framework, which will be kind of a framework that will outline where we’re going with investing in the development of our infants, prenatal to three or four years old and getting ready for school. But this motion that’s before us here will not only allow for affordable daycare, but it will also increase the amount of people that we’ll get back into our workforce, our residents of the North that are currently stay-at-home moms, stay-at-home dads. They have the opportunity now to have affordable daycare, but also get into the workforce.
So it’s a win-win situation, from what I see, and it’s about putting the pieces together. We’ve got the framework coming and we need those centres available for people in the Northwest Territories. It’s about putting those pieces together so that our government, our territory can be self-sustaining in the future and that our residents don’t leave and that they stay here in the North and that we attract more people from the South who want to come up here and work in our economy, but also want to have families and have daycares to support these families.
So I’m glad that Mr. Bromley and Mr. Yakeleya brought this motion forward and I do look forward to seeing what the outcome of this is, and I will be voting in favour of the motion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. To the motion. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to speak to this motion. I want to acknowledge Mr. Bromley and Mr. Yakeleya for bringing this initiative forward. In my time as a legislator and certainly in my short life of being a parent these last almost 12 years, I’ve never heard anyone say my goodness, child care is so cheap I’ll take two.
Quite frankly, child care seems to be one of the most amazing cost burdens on a young family, and as said by other speakers here today, it seems to be easily one of the immediate deterrents as to why they don’t expand their family. The cost of child care is insurmountable for most. We hear the problems about one has to stay home, because if they have more than two, then going to work is just a waste of time, or maybe it’s the mental health break that a particular parent needs from staying home to take care of all those kids. I hear that often that people are working just for child care fees and that is just ridiculous.
If we wanted to do something immediately for the working poor, those people who go to work every day, this could be something and it could be something immediately. I often hear about more tax deductions and more tax breaks, but when you look at something like a $7 daycare opportunity versus a tax break, I’m not against tax breaks, but the problem with that reality is you have to actually be making money in order to get money back. That’s one of the biggest challenges about tax breaks. So I always consider them a bit of a misnomer or red herring when it comes to solving cost and poverty problems. Tax breaks only help the rich, not the working poor.
As stated so eloquently in the motion and further reiterated by Member Bromley, the $7 per day program would help child poverty rates. As said by all, it would get more people in the workforce. It would give them the opportunity to get out and be involved and it would certainly raise the stature and health, as we’ve all talked about the working poor.
There was a time when we talked about free education and it was such a crazy thought back then. Education, it wasn’t that long ago it was for the rich, the elites, the affluent. Then it became open for the public. It wasn’t that long ago the similar arguments were made for health care; it was for the rich, the important, the affluent. Now things like that have become stalwart principles of who Canadians are. How long do we need to continue to have the argument that the most important bundles in our life, our children, should not deserve the same type of philosophy? I think we’re now coming to the point of Canadian values that could be representative in a way like Quebec has been leading on that these values should be representative of who we are to demonstrate how important our children are by doing this. This not only helps our children, supports our children, but it also supports the working families that struggle each and every day to go to work to help feed these families, help take care of these families.
In a civil society as ours, the one that we strive each and every day to improve upon, a relentless struggle such as this, to me I think this is a wonderful value that we would add to our chests, as Canadians say. You know, we care about health care, we care about education and we care about children. We’ve heard repeatedly about how this will empower women. I think that anything that helps in that direction is a serious step that should never be held back.
This motion goes much further than just $7 a day. It helps a community, this help’s the people and this will help the territory. I envy the province of Quebec. I also admire them for their boldness of trying something different.
Mrs. Groenewegen has talked about some of the challenges and I will acknowledge that she’s probably on the right track in the sense of there are concerns to be balanced out. I don’t necessarily agree with her, but I do welcome it because those challenges need to be sought out and considered, balanced and weighed. At the end of the day, we will choose the path forward.
The problem with this motion is not on this side of the House. The Members at large are asking for this, even conditional support from Members. It’s the direction that we’re looking for that the other side that we empower with the cash to hear the voices of the many. More than 50 percent of this Legislature, I’m hopeful, will vote in favour of this motion. I’m hopeful this will have positive change, lasting change on young minds, young people and certainly working families.
So if it’s not crystal clear by now, I will be voting in favour of this so we, too, will celebrate the joys and the empowerment a $7 daycare fee a day that Quebec enjoys, our northern people and our hardworking families deserve too. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. To the motion. Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will be voting in favour of this motion heavy-heartedly, because I understand that we want to investigate this, I understand that Quebec has a program in place that is innovative, but I have sat in this House and given the Minister of Finance difficulty that since division our budget has doubled and that we are looking at additional costs on top of that. Fiscally responsible we need to be here as well.
I am supporting this motion to investigate the possibilities of this. My colleagues have made good points to support it. I do have lots of concerns on the costs that are going to be associated to it. It’s a social state that we’re getting into, so how much more are we going to do?
Other colleagues have argued the other side of it, that how much more are we going to do for children and families and stuff like that to help raise their children? Somewhere there has to be some responsibility on both parties.
I thought I would just express those concerns about the financial costs associated with it. We often just say, from this side, well, let’s look at the costs and the other side should be implementing what we want to do, but we also ask for them all the time to be fiscally responsible, look at the budget. We are challenged to find other funds to do other projects that we want to do, so we have to look at that responsibility as well. But I think we should be investigating the possibility of it. Mr. Hawkins talked about education and I think that’s a good point. It wasn’t free before. There are some good points and we can look at the investigation once the study is completed. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. To the motion. Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, will be supporting this motion, but I would just like to say a few things. I know from the standpoint in the smaller communities, this is going to be very difficult as the cost of living in the smaller communities is quite extreme. To operate a facility like this is in the neighbourhood of $6,000 to $10,000. With anywhere from five to 10 children attending these, it’s just not feasible. But if it is possible, and I think that is what this study will indicate, I am in support of it. I think that my constituents will benefit from it and also many of the residents of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. To the motion. Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, will be supporting this motion. I would like to thank my colleagues for leading the initiative and the development of this draft. What I would like to at least point out is that if cost is a factor, one group that we keep out of the loop at times is the federal government. If I can recall, the federal government has obligations to ensure that there are equitable programs and services delivered for the citizens of the NWT. I hope that Cabinet at some point remembers that and carries that message to Ottawa. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. To the motion. Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank the Members for speaking to this point on the motion that was brought forward. I would like to thank the Member, Mr. Bromley, for his continuous support and also the Regular Members as well.
Early childhood learning and provision of quality child care in the NWT, of course, has been at the forefront of our goals and objectives. Healthy, educated people free from poverty is one of the goals of this Assembly and it starts in a child. We have to recognize achieving our goals for our people depends on a strong economy. I’ve heard that from some of the Members here. That helps create a fiscal capacity that we need to provide programs and services that people rely on.
We can’t invest money that we don’t have. The overall pot will shrink if we don’t also take steps to create a strong, diversified economy. This is also a priority identified by this Assembly. This government fully understands that healthy, well-adjusted children become fully functioning and contributing adults, and the experience of a child’s early years affects their entire life. We know that. Through our work in early childhood over the five years, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment alone has invested just under $33.5 million in our young children with the introduction of the Early Childhood Development Framework. Those investments will continue.
Our investment must be strategic, well thought out, bearing in mind our fiscal realities, and we believe – and this has been affirmed by Members of this House many times – that money invested in the early years is money well spent. I share Mr. Bromley’s interest, and Members' as well, to provide quality child care, but before jumping into universal child care as a fix, I would like to share some of the key facts for the Members.
Like Quebec and other provincial and territorial jurisdictions, the GNWT does not build and run child care facilities. Instead our government subsidizes licenced daycare operations, regulates them and, where required, subsidizes low-income parents who act as daycare providers by the private sector.
The Income Assistance program, as Member Bromley alluded to, provides financial support towards the cost of child care for low-income NWT families who are either working or enrolled in school in the NWT. We provide subsidies for licenced child care operators, which creates incentives to run such facilities. We also develop regulations and monitor facilities to ensure that child care facilities are safe and help our children learn and grow in a positive environment.
The reality is, however, that many of our communities do not have child care centres that we can subsidize, as Member Blake alluded to. Eleven communities in the NWT currently have no licenced child care facility. Meaning that at $7 per day, as in Quebec, this will not work for them in the small communities. It should also come as no surprise to these 11 communities, our small communities where no licenced daycares currently exist. The approach taken by Quebec and Scandinavia doesn’t easily translate to the NWT realities. Using Quebec’s approach would potentially exclude one-third of our small communities that have no licenced child care program and where a private sector market for daycare will struggle to emerge.
It is our obligation to find affordable solutions that work for all of our communities. That is why my department has been working on a multi-pronged approach that is flexible enough to meet the unique needs and desires of parents in the small and large communities.
Education, Culture and Employment, along with the Department of Health and Social Services, has done considerable work to study concrete actions that support the Early Childhood Development Framework, as Member Moses identified, as well, with a view of providing access to quality child care as well as empowering parents and caregivers to have tools to be supportive parents. For example, we are looking at ways to empower parents who want to stay at home and take care of their children. Daycare isn’t for everyone, and we must respect that as well. We are also looking at ways to ensure that child care facilities are staffed by qualified workers who earn a reasonable wage. Research also tells us that in many of our communities, schools are not being used at the fullest capacity, having a 60 percent average occupancy rate of the schools in the NWT. This reality becomes an opportunity for use of facilities to meet the community daycare child care needs in all of our communities.
At the end of the day, there is no silver bullet or one-size-fits-all solution for improving child development in the Northwest Territories. What might work in Yellowknife is not automatically appropriate for regional centres or smaller communities. We will continue to implement a flexible, multi-pronged approach to help meet the needs of child care of all NWT communities, families and parents.
Since the motion is direction to the government, Cabinet will abstain from voting. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. To the motion. I will allow the mover of the motion to have closing remarks. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to start by thanking all of my colleagues who have spoken to this motion. I think everybody was detecting the possible gain that could be made with this program, even those that were most concerned about the bottom line, so I appreciate their support and the concerns expressed, many of which I agreed with, with the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Mr. Yakeleya mentioned it’s something like over $40 per day per child daycare costs. I assumed $40 a day and did a quick calculation: For two children at $1,800 per month; three children, $2,640 per month, so we know it’s something about that. These are entirely prohibitive for, I would say, most people in the Northwest Territories.
Child care providers, it’s a bit of a roll of the dice on the quality and the training that the providers have. What we’re looking for here is looking into a system that provides a known quantity there. We want people that are early childhood education workers, early childhood development professionals to be working in those child care facilities.
The current system is loaded, as we know, with barriers. It’s not affordable. It’s poorly accessible, albeit the Minister is doing what he can to build up the program and getting support from us in the meantime. But the bottom line here is we don’t have the child care spaces. We need them, and we need them to be affordable. Many benefits were mentioned and dwelt upon, the improved labour force and so on. The birthrate is something that I hadn’t mentioned, and I knew that would catch the interest of the Finance Minister and the Premier. Apparently, that is a phenomenon that does happen. Mr. Hawkins mentioned that he would expect this to happen with this sort of support, and of course, I know this House is interested in that.
I appreciate Mrs. Groenewegen stepping out here. I believe her comment was, “I can go along with this, I guess,” so that’s stepping out for Mrs. Groenewegen. I appreciate that. But the dilemma she posed, what about the moms and dads that should be staying home and looking after these kids. Well, that could be, and I think that is absolutely the first priority, and what we want is a system that would encourage that and support that as a first priority to the degree that it’s possible. I think we are having some mechanisms in place in our workplace now that supports that sort of thing. That is the first priority.
Unfortunately, 38 percent of the people in poverty in the Northwest Territories are single parents with children and they don’t have that option. There are many other exceptions and that’s what we’re talking about here. It could be a key underpinning to both our Anti-Poverty Strategy and our early childhood development programs. That has been mentioned. It will attract people and keep people here. Again I’m sure the Minister of Finance and the Premier will be very interested in that aspect of the program.
The benefits begin accruing quickly, very quickly, because it frees up parents to go out and get work or the education that they need. The most important bundles in our life, as I believe Mr. Hawkins mentioned, need to be reflected in our policies and programs. That’s what we’re talking about and that’s, I think, why it has the fundamental support across the House here is that true statement that I think we can all subscribe to.
There was heavy-hearted support because we need to be fiscally responsible. Again, I don’t think there’s a person in the House that disagrees with that. We do need to be fiscally responsible, and I am asking that we do the full cost accounting. In the assessment work that’s been done on these programs, in every case it has indicated benefits based on financial aspects, economic aspects and social aspects. Somebody mentioned the federal government. I think Mr. Nadli mentioned the need for federal government participation. In fact, the Quebec model shows that without putting a dime into the program, the federal government was gaining 44 cents per dollar expended by the Quebec government because of the increased economic activity that was enabled by a comprehensive, affordable child care program. Pretty darn substantial.
That assessment needs to be done. I agree with Mrs. Groenewegen, Mr. Bouchard and others that have mentioned that. That’s what we’re on about here. We want it looked at critically but with a full cost accounting approach to meet many of the needs of this House and, again, to complement the various strategies that we have and are being put in place. As we know, those that are pursuing so hard the early childhood development and anti-poverty programs, all of them will tell you this would be a core underpinning to those programs and strategies.
Again, thank you very much for this opportunity, Mr. Speaker.
