Mr. Speaker, I’m going to have questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment regarding some of this Junior Kindergarten stuff, just to follow up with some of the problems that we’ve talked about to date and certainly issues I’ve raised before.
I was speaking to two parents yesterday with grave concerns about this, because they had gone to an invitation at, I believe, our museum to talk about the impacts on day home operators, and the senior official said that, yes, you might lose a third of your income, but if you were better budgeters you would notice very little change.
Is that the advice our senior officials are giving the families that take care of our most precious people, which is our children? Is that sanctioned and condoned and directed by the Department of Education?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. When we talked about rolling out the Junior Kindergarten, we wanted to work closely with the daycare providers and also the child care workers. We provided as much support as we possibly could to hear their perspective, and we took all that into consideration as well.
That’s not an answer. When the senior official says day homes need to accept that things are going to change and you’re going to lose money and you need to accept that, when two parents are telling me this yesterday, directed from our government, which in essence is the Minister’s words if you put it this way, because they’re head of the department, is this sanctioned, condoned and stood by, by this Minister?
Again, when we are rolling out the program this fall, we talk about the implications into the daycare providers, and the contributions they get from ECE is based on enrolment, the enrolment of the child in the daycare system. We’ll continue to support those areas.
That’s okay. I’m two for two. Two questions, no answers. I’ll keep going.
Is it sanctioned and condoned and supported by this particular Minister that when a government official tells these people in a roomful of parents and daycare operators, et cetera, that if you could budget and manage your money better this wouldn’t be a problem? These are parents telling me this. Does the Minister stand by those words?
With any organization there is a budgeting process. We have to work with that. As the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, we provide public money to these organizations. There is the accountability issue and transparency issues, so we’ll continue to support that.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Mr. Speaker the government official continues on by saying if you can’t manage your own money, give us your budgets and we’ll do it for you, and by the way, you probably won’t notice any change. What facts support that when the government takes a third of the revenue stream and moves them over to Junior Kindergarten, and the government seems to be telling everybody, don’t worry, go to the schools for free child care, but don’t worry, lots of people still want to pay $1,000 a month, so you’ve got no problems. What does the government think about that and does the Minister stand by that, that they’re offering to say if you cannot manage your own budgets we’ll do them for you?
As I stated in this House, I did meet with both YK 1 and the Catholic School Board just a couple days ago, and we’re compiling all the numbers now. We want to have the true facts and the true numbers. That will be before us early next week and we will be releasing that to the public.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Yakeleya.
