Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m the first one that will stand up in this House and say that I’ve made a mistake, and I would like to retract a thought and a theory that I put forward in this House last Thursday.
The Minister’s plan and the Department of Education’s plan for Junior Kindergarten is not only going to hurt the regional and large communities, it is going to be a disaster in all communities, including small communities.
You cannot move an initiative like this forward with no resources. I know I may be repeating myself, but you can’t do it. You can’t throw $15,000 at a small community and say, here, invite all the four-year-olds into your school program.
The Education Renewal Initiative, which the department touts as a great document and a great piece of work, the very principles of this particular document are that the community and the school are connected. The active involvement and role of all partners, students, families, communities, school staff, educators, Aboriginal governments and business are highly valued in the learning that occurs in and outside of the school walls. Mr. Speaker, I would like to suggest to you that this principle of the Education Renewal Initiative has not been adhered to by the department or considered by this Minister when talking about the implementation of Junior Kindergarten.
I hate, as a legislator, to see things torn down that people have toiled and volunteered and struggled to build for years and years and years. I had a chance to be home in Hay River this weekend. It is not just the regional centres, I heard from Kakisa; I heard from Lutselk’e; I heard from Deline; I heard from Fort Providence; I heard from all of these communities who have existing early childhood development programming which is working.
When we had the folks from Education come to Hay River and we had our workshop about the Education Renewal Initiative, we talked about the importance of things being driven from the community up, not from the government down. This Junior Kindergarten program is a prime example of the government dictating to the communities what they’ll have.
I would rather see them pool the resources, if there are any, and it’s very little, but pool the very limited resources for Junior Kindergarten into some kind of a pot of money and then allow communities that don’t have early childhood development on a community-by-community basis to apply for, make a case for that and what they can do. Is it better in the school? Is it better in some other infrastructure within the community? Is it better in a church basement? Where could we best deliver early childhood development in those communities, instead of dictating to everybody? So, it’s a no win. It’s bad for the communities that already have something established, and it’s not enough resources for the people who don’t. It’s a lose-lose all around.
Mr. Speaker, may I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement? Thank you.
---Unanimous consent granted
Mr. Speaker, like I said, I hate to see things regress; I hate to see things torn down; and we are going to throw away federal money for Aboriginal Head Start; we’re going to throw away the community participation and the dollars, the volunteers, because we’re saying we’re going to take over educating the four-year-olds, and we’re not going to do a very good job with the plan that we have in hand.
I’m going to ask the Minister today, later on, if he will go back to the drawing board. Let’s start again, let’s find out where the need is, let’s identify the resources, and let’s come up with a much better plan. Take it back to the drawing board. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
