Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to ask questions and let the Minister of Education and my constituents know that junior kindergarten, despite questions and concerns from Yellowknife Members, is a good thing for our small communities.
So, what I’d like to ask the Minister firstly, which communities currently do not have any licenced child care programming? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. After our engagement with the communities, numerous discussions that we’ve been having, especially the small communities, it’s been identified that there are 10 communities without licenced child care programming. First are Colville Lake, Enterprise, Jean Marie River, Lutselk’e, Kakisa, Nahanni Butte, Norman Wells, Trout Lake, Tsiigehtchic and Wrigley. Those are the communities without licenced child care programming. Mahsi.
Thank you very much. So, the plan to roll out junior kindergarten, is that coming this fall?
Mahsi. The plan is to obviously roll out the program this school year, 2014, covering the 29 communities, which will offset the 10 communities that are here before us without child care programming. The following year will be, obviously, regional to Hay River and then the following year, the last phase of approach will be to cover the Yellowknife area. Mahsi.
Certainly, there will be a role for early childhood workers. I’d like to ask the Minister what the plan is to assist education with early childhood workers as we move forward with junior kindergarten.
Part of the plan will be to work with existing professional staff that we have currently, and we’re going to be providing specific training to deal with the early childhood as well. This will be happening prior to the summer and also in the fall time for those individuals that may have missed their training. Not only that, we are in the process of topping up the wages for those child care workers as well. Then we have scholarships for those individuals that want to pursue their higher education. We want them to come back, so we will be providing an incentive for them to come back to work for us, so we want to top up their wages so at least they’ll be comparable to across Canada.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary. Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. In our small communities there’s a potential of increasing employment with early childhood workers and the junior kindergarten. Can the Minister confirm that?
We have to look at all angles, how many professionals that we have in the communities that can deal with… We currently have some of the preschools and we have junior kindergarten being rolled out as part of the kindergarten program because some of the communities are very small, the facility themselves as well, so it will be part of the kindergarten and also junior kindergarten, part of the play area. Those are areas that we’re still identifying as we move forward, but it will be offset by those professions that are in the system and building on that.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
