Good afternoon, colleagues. I would like to take this opportunity, as I do during each sitting, to acknowledge those of our friends and families who have passed away since we last met. There have been some tragic losses in our communities and I extend the condolences of this House to all who are grieving the loss of loved ones. We grieve with you. My thoughts and prayers for the communities of Sachs Harbour: Tyson Lennie, mother Sarah Lennie, Freddy Lennie, our thoughts and prayers are with you; Tuktoyaktuk: Troy Taylor, parents Laura Raymond and Ronnie Taylor; my aunt Bessie Raddi, her husband, Jim, and children Greta, Roxanne, Tyrone and Tiffany, and all the grandchildren, our thoughts and prayers are with you.
Today I am unable to attend the funeral service of one respected elder in my home community and I wish I was there to be with you all, but my thoughts and prayers are with you for Christina Felix, a well-respected elder. Her children Eileen, Jim, Willie, Emmanuel Jr., Clarence and Dolly, Wayne, Thomas and Deanna, my thoughts and prayers are with you for this day.
Ulukhaktok: Renie Oliktoak passed, her children Katie, Mary, Annie, Elik, Agnes, Sadie, Lucy, Joanne, Joshua, Molly, Jason and Merven, my thoughts and prayers are with you.
Mr. Speaker, on March 4, 2014, this Assembly received a report on child and family services from the Auditor General of Canada. The report confirmed what we already knew: that we need to do a better job of supporting children and families. It highlighted areas where
our system has seriously failed. It told how some children are falling through the cracks and how some health and social services authorities have not routinely followed up on the well-being of children placed into care. These situations are unacceptable.
I recognize the need for change, and I am committed to taking aggressive action to make it happen.
Mr. Speaker, later today I will table the report of the director of child and family services, covering the years 2002 through 2012. Although we still have a long way to go, the report shows that we are making progress in some areas. For example, over 11 years the proportion of children receiving services in their family home has increased. The rate of voluntary service agreements and plan of care agreements has gone up. There has been a corresponding decrease in the rate of custody orders and southern placements. This tells us that parents are seeking help and making efforts to improve the situations which are putting their children at risk.
It is also a positive sign that more youth between the ages of 16 and 18 are receiving services. This addresses a gap that was identified as critical by the Standing Committee on Social Programs of the 16th Legislative Assembly.
Mr. Speaker, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. The proportion of Aboriginal children in the system is far too high. The Auditor General of Canada has confirmed that there are serious deficiencies in accountability, monitoring, reporting and compliance. Addressing these gaps is a top priority and work is underway.
Moving forward, we need a fundamental shift in philosophy. We need to move to a system that puts greater emphasis on building strong families. We need to support families at risk so that children don’t need to come under our care. When that fails, we need to have supports in place in the community that will allow children to stay in their homes and will help their parents get back on track.
Mr. Speaker, we know what needs to be done and we will do it. We have already put the key building blocks in place to support families at risk with our strategic action plans for Early Childhood Development, Addictions and Mental Health, Economic Opportunities and Anti-Poverty. Later this summer I will share with Members of this House an action plan on building stronger families. It will provide a roadmap for changing the child and family services system to achieve these goals. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to share some exciting news about the rollout of junior kindergarten that will begin in the fall of 2014. There has been much discussion on how we are implementing junior kindergarten, and we carefully considered comments and concerns raised by education boards on the rollout of junior kindergarten.
Mr. Speaker, we put the decision to education boards and gave them a choice of whether they wanted to implement junior kindergarten in the fall of this year, or defer it to next year.
I am pleased to announce that of the 29 small communities who were offered the chance to implement JK this September, 22 have chosen to say yes to junior kindergarten implementation. Of the seven communities that chose to defer for a year, four of these are the communities in the Tlicho region. While the Tlicho Government fully supports junior kindergarten, it has chosen to defer implementation to 2015 because it is considering its own early childhood legislation and wants to consider a good fit between its early childhood programs and junior kindergarten. Aside from the Tlicho region, only three communities decided to wait another year: Aklavik, Paulatuk and Jean Marie River. In each of these communities, the boards and schools felt they were just not ready to deliver junior kindergarten this fall, and we respect that choice.
Mr. Speaker, it is great news for the Northwest Territories that free, optional, play-based junior kindergarten will be introduced in 22 communities this fall. Then in 2015-16, junior kindergarten will be introduced in the remaining small communities as well as Hay River, Inuvik and Fort Smith. In 2016-17 Yellowknife comes on stream, and junior kindergarten will be available in every community in the territory.
Mr. Speaker, as I have said before in this House, junior kindergarten is the right thing to do. Right now 10 of our smallest communities have no access to early child care programs. These communities in particular will get a real benefit from having junior kindergarten delivered in established and safe places: our schools. It will be taught by trained teachers with specialized junior kindergarten in-service training and will use a play-based exploratory curriculum. Our junior kindergarten teachers will continue to undergo training to ensure they meet the needs of our early learners. As I have said before, junior kindergarten is not about children in desks, this is about giving children the tools and ability to discover, imagine and learn.
Mr. Speaker, as we roll out junior kindergarten, there may be some growing pains. But we have learned from our junior kindergarten pilot sites. At one of these sites, some children weren’t initially ready for junior kindergarten and others had to be introduced slowly. But they learned and adapted, and within a few months, all of the four-year-old children in the communities were attending. We have learned from this experience. In fact, we are already hearing that those schools that have offered junior kindergarten have made incredible strides: they are seeing more confident, socialized children that are engaged and learning and, most importantly, having fun.
Mr. Speaker, I have also met with the chairs of YCS and YK1 on Tuesday. The meeting was very productive and we agreed to get our respective staff to meet and go over the junior kindergarten implications for both school boards. The meetings between staff have taken place and I am advised that they are now in the process of finalizing their analysis. I will report back with the facts on the implementation of junior kindergarten for the two Yellowknife education authorities.
We know that we have moved very quickly on this, but we heard, loud and clear, that we weren’t doing enough for our children. Feedback from surveys, meetings and roundtables in the last 18 months specifically directed us to investigate early learning programs for our children.
Mr. Speaker, delivering a quality early childhood program in these 22 communities this fall will not just benefit those communities, it will benefit the territory as a whole. As territorial leaders, we should recognize that everyone benefits from investments in our children, whether that’s in Yellowknife, regional centres, or our small communities. We need to give our children, no matter where they live, the best programming we can offer “right from the start.” Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.
Mr. Speaker, tourism is the Northwest Territories’ largest renewable resource-based sector. Last year approximately 76,000 tourists visited the territory, one of the highest visitor numbers we have seen in the last decade.
Today I would like to tell you about ways we have and will be improving our territorial parks and the positive outlook for our tourism industry.
To ensure an enjoyable experience in our territorial parks, we invest heavily in parks facilities and infrastructure. There is a new kitchen shelter situated closer to the waterfront at Fred Henne beach that is available to rent. At the Prelude Lake Territorial Park marina, more parking spaces are available. At Nitainlaii and Gwich’in Territorial Parks in the Beaufort-Delta region, new hiking trails have been developed. There is also a new shower building at Queen Elizabeth Territorial Park near Fort Smith.
Our efforts to promote our territorial parks and campgrounds and the investments we are making to improve these facilities are not going unnoticed. In early May, Fred Henne and Blackstone Territorial parks were both included in the list of “Best Family Campgrounds in Canada” by Today’s Parent magazine.
Mr. Speaker, this year we launched a new online campground reservation system at NWTparks.ca. The new booking system makes reserving campsites quick and easy, and multiple sites can be booked for different dates in one simple transaction. Campers can book double sites to guarantee they can camp together with their friends and families. The public response to the new website was overwhelming, and over 1,000 online reservations were made the first day the site was open. We also conducted a direct mail campaign in early March to select households in Edmonton and Calgary with the result that visits to the NWT parks website escalated.
Families are major users of our territorial parks, and this year we embarked on an education and public awareness campaign to ensure the parks are fun and safe for families. We have launched a water safety campaign that will run throughout the summer in northern newspapers, on Moose FM 100 radio, on social media and on-screen at the Yellowknife Capitol Theatre. These ads promote the importance of being within arm’s reach of children who are swimming, wearing a lifejacket, and watching children near water.
These public awareness materials will be supplied to schools and daycares in Yellowknife and Hay River in the last two weeks of classes, and available at Fred Henne and Hay River Territorial Park beaches.
Emergency phone boxes will be available at Fred Henne and Hay River beaches. There is also new, easy-to-understand signage alerting beachgoers to safety hazards. With the assistance of local contractor Mr. Trevor Kasteel and other local businesses, we have installed a lifejacket loaner station at Fred Henne. Finally, we will be training our parks staff in basic emergency procedures.
These steps will ensure our territorial park beaches are among the safest in the country.
Mr. Speaker, territorial parks are just one part of a tourism sector that continues to grow stronger. I have received reports from our tour operators that the Aurora visitor statistics were very high again this past season. NWT Tourism, the destination marketing organization that the GNWT funds and works closely with, is doing solid work. Their new “Aurora Capital of the World” brand has gained us recognition around the world as the premiere Aurora viewing destination.
This year we saw the number of Chinese visitors to the territory increase substantially again. The Northern Frontier Visitors Centre alone welcomed over 1,000 Chinese visitors in the first quarter of 2014.
Our outdoor adventure operators are also reporting increased bookings for the summer. These visitors are predominantly exploring the Sahtu and Deh Cho regions.
Mr. Speaker, the tourism industry plays a vital role in our economy and the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment is dedicated to seeing it thrive. Supporting the growth of tourism through investments into NWT parks and tourism infrastructure helps create a vibrant and diversified territorial economy, one of the goals of the 17th Legislative Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Good afternoon. I just want to give a little update on some issues related to health and social services in Hay River.
Mr. Speaker, the new hospital or the new health centre in Hay River is well underway, creating a lot of activity and it looks like things are right on schedule. I had the occasion to have some first-hand personal experience with our health services in Hay River in the last six weeks, and I want to report that it is a good system, that it does work. Right from the minute that I walked in the door, off to X-ray to see the physician, the follow-up X-rays, trips to the medical clinic, I have nothing but the highest regard for all of the people who are delivering services in Hay River and for the way that the system works.
As an indication of this, I wanted to share that, maybe since the last time we were here in this House, a health care professional at the Hay River clinic was awarded a very prestigious award by the Hay River Chamber of Commerce for the outstanding service person. So, for a business community that should be all about customer service, to award a person in the public sector the outstanding service person in a community the size of Hay River is quite something to say for the staff at our Hay River medical clinic, and that recipient was Mrs. Iris Blake. She is definitely an integral part of that clinic.
We have stood in this House so many times and talked about the lack of physicians in Hay River. As many will know, awhile back we signed a resident permanent physician by the name of Dr. Coralie Boudreau, and today I’m pleased to share that a Dr. John Desmond and his family will be moving to Hay River and will also be joining the Hay River Health Authority as a second resident physician for Hay River.
In this good news, we have to be willing to stand up and share that as well. In the meantime, we continue to be well served by our locums that are often on a rotation, where we see the same ones coming back to the community on a continuous basis.
Shortly, the Minister of Health and Social Services will be announcing the name of our new health centre. We look forward to that and of big things to come from this department. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today, too, to talk about the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority. We’re proud to announce that they’ve hired two midwives to come on stream in September and October of the fall.
The authority has been working to get the spaces available for the midwives, to make the medical clinic available and set up for them, as well as a delivery area for the potential birthing. They’ve purchased equipment from last year’s funding.
They set up a Midwives Committee to basically work to see how it’s going to be implemented, how it affects all the different parts of the authority, such as labs, acute care, practitioners, medical clinic, et cetera, and to help develop processes and policies for the midwives.
Hay River Health and Social Services continues to work with the midwives consultants from the Department of Health and Social Services. They are also linking and working with the Fort Smith Midwifery Program, to make sure that there’s a consistency and similar policies that are being implemented.
I’d like to take this time to thank those people who have made this happen. We have some tremendous staff at the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority that basically did all the hiring, that went out and found these people. They’re going to be a vital part of our community.
I’d like to thank the former Minister and current Minister for their help in making this happen as well as the many advocates that helped us – my colleague, Mrs. Groenewegen; Social Programs committee – to move this up and make this happen sooner than later. There are also many advocates out there in the public who sent letters of support saying that this should happen sooner than later, and we’re pleased that it is. But we are also pleased that Hay River will now be on birth certificates, finally, in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My communities and constituents are talking about how dry the forests are this spring. We see and have heard that this year’s fire season is predicted to be a very, very bad year.
Firstly, I want to commend our brave men and women who have been hired this year, and with all the fire crews throughout the North they will keep our people and property safe. If I may, Mr. Speaker, on our behalf, I salute them in advance for their efforts for this coming fire season.
A constituent has been wondering if the fires had been more aggressively fought last year at the beginning of the season, would residents have been enveloped in smoke for weeks at a time? Sensitive residents, elders and young children can suffer from smoke inhalation, as we have seen last year.
I will be asking the Minister of ENR later today, will the department modify their planned approach to be more proactive when they’re fighting fires, to avoid weeks and months of smoke inhalation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In listening to our Premier’s sessional statement yesterday, one line stood out which I’d like to share with you today: “Devolution has the potential to create a strong, prosperous territory that provides opportunities for its residents to succeed and supports those who need our help.”
Mr. Speaker, that is the key word of the day. Never before in our territorial history has one government been faced with such a significant milestone in its evolutionary path. Our new regulatory regime with new ministerial powers will no doubt create new opportunities that will equally test the moral fabric of what we know today as consensus government. Yes, we have given ourselves new powers and new opportunities on protecting our environment, managing our land and developing our resources, yet we should question where is the government’s commitment to accountability and transparency on this evolutionary path. As this government becomes to realize its complexity and sophistication, so too will be the complex myriad of appeal mechanisms, untested policies and poor legislation for its people.
This begs to ask, who is going to help our residents succeed in this brave new world? The answer is so very simple: we need, more than ever, an ombudsman office. The Premier reminds us this balanced agenda focused on helping the people of the Northwest Territories, as he states, “putting Northerners in charge of decisions that affect them,” then clearly the next logical evolutionary step is to create an independent body which is the hallmark of transparency and accountability.
Now is the time for this government to join together with Regular Members and Northerners to forge a pathway to a proper support mechanism working alongside our current oversight commissions of privacy, equal pay, official languages and human rights. In fact, there exists a huge opportunity for the creation of a one-stop single-window government accountability office, an office that could house all levels of commissions with the addition of an ombudsman.
This government accountability office concept would set the core standard of accountability and transparency and could conceivably be the true hallmark of a post=devolutionary legacy.
This is what the people want, this is what the people expect, and this is what we ask. Mr. Premier, are you listening? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The cost of living in our small communities has been brought up to this government before and here we are again talking about the high cost of food, fuel and community services. My community of Tsiigehtchic recently experienced a huge increase in the price of fuel. One litre of gas costs $2.01, which rose 9 cents. Heating fuel is $1.92. Petrol is 19 cents. Also, diesel fuel is $2.05 per litre.
Our constituents want to know why there is such a huge increase in fuel costs for Tsiigehtchic. They are concerned that this increase will affect many of our residents in terms of hunting, fishing and gathering for their livelihoods because they need fuel to go out in their boats, vehicles, snowmobiles and also to heat their homes.
Many of our elders are very active. They still go out hauling wood, hunting and travelling to their camps for traditional living. The high cost of gasoline and other fuels will surely affect their way of living. Our elders have a pension that they live on and use sparingly for one month at a time. If they choose to go out on the land, this added cost will prevent them from continuing their healthy living lifestyle. This also goes for the rest of our community members. We are asking ourselves, how can we continue this lifestyle when the cost of gas is so high? If we want to show our youth hunting, fishing and gathering skills, we need the means to go out on the land.
As leaders, we need to work together to find a lasting solution, whether it is barging in gas and fuel instead of trucking. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I heard a quote from somebody that said, “never tear down anything unless you’re prepared to build something better in its place.” The last couple of days I had the pleasure of meeting with the Tulita leaders, and I want to thank Premier McLeod and the Ministers for making themselves available to sit down with the Tulita leadership to talk about some of the issues they are dealing with today.
What I got from the Tulita leadership meeting with the Ministers and the Premier is that we must keep moving forward no matter what happens. We can either sit idle or we can move to live, and they chose to move forward to make a life for themselves.
I also heard it is far more difficult to be a builder of people and create opportunities, jobs and businesses and anything in this life here. What I got from the leadership meeting is we’re in control. In 1994, the land claims, there were provisions in our own land claims to ensure that we have control. That has not happened in the past. By gaining control in the land claims, we have access and benefits which allows direct involvement that sets the terms and conditions for coming and working on our land. We have land use plans. This involves communities and elders. I know my mom was involved in that, that we’re participating, which lands were set aside for development, what lands where it says no development. We have harvesting areas, spiritual areas, cultural areas. We even announced Naats’ihch’oh Park as our area.
We have a young population. There are 45 potential graduates this year, 59 next year and 51 the following year. What will we do for them? What are we going to set in place for them? We have Aurora College graduates.
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my Member’s statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
There are 10 Aurora Collage graduates this year. What are the training opportunities? We’re looking for a Sahtu technical institution. We have 295 people in the Sahtu today who are capable of working, plus more that need to get to work. We had income assistance decrease a million dollars when there was work going on in the Sahtu region.
The point I want to conclude is our people want wellness. They want to have wellness of our people, on-the-land programs, a transition home for people, and they want to get our people to work. The message is that we want to work. What I want to say in closing from the leaders, is that it’s better to be a builder than a destroyer.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to turn to the topic of how income assistance is administered. The Auditor General’s 2013 report contains shocking findings about failures to service delivery, things like inconsistent treatment of clients and front-line workers performing many other duties without adequate supervision.
My focus today is the productive choices requirement for clients of income assistance. Productive choices placements are mandatory for all adults in the client’s household, although exceptions only apply to anyone who is disabled, over 60, or unfit to work because of a medical condition.
I’m not convinced the productive choices requirement is working effectively. For one thing, organizations are being unnecessarily burdened. One of the band councils in my riding has a core staff of three, and they are expected to provide work for clients of income support, but there isn’t always enough work for them to do. Besides that, staff members don’t have time to properly supervise them. The government is thrusting people into make-work situations and placing undue pressure on local organizations. It’s one more example of poor management.
Another problem is with the term “productive choices” itself. It implies that income support clients are personally at fault for their circumstances, that they must be steered away from unproductive choices. Income support clients don’t enjoy having to rely on the government to get by. It’s a tough way to live. If we examine things more closely, we find that it’s not a simple matter of personal choice. Maybe the person is living in a community with super high unemployment rates. Maybe they’re dealing with an addiction or some form of intergenerational trauma or maybe they’re a single parent facing the perennial struggle to combine child care duties and paid work.
A third problem is how the productive choices component is administered. Client services officers, or CSOs as they’re known, have too much discretion. On a case-by-case basis, CSOs determine where clients will be placed and how many hours a week they’ll spend at their placement. Things aren’t standardized, which isn’t fair to clients.
It’s time to review the productive choices component of the income support and consider policy changes. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A good segue; thanks to Member Nadli for that. We are facing a housing crisis in Yellowknife. We all experience the high cost of living, and especially housing in Yellowknife, but government policies are causing people with the lowest incomes and housing issues to struggle more than ever.
Local organizations that help people with low income note that waiting lists for their low-income housing programs are longer than they’ve ever seen them. The same is true for public housing units. The lists are so long that for most people they are not a viable option. People end up paying sky high rents in the private rental market.
One constituent couple is addressing their issues by going to Alberta for addictions treatment, requiring temporary placement of their children and a plan of care. This is exactly what we say we want people to do: making productive choices such as seeking treatment and things will get better. But once in treatment, the Housing Corporation tried to evict them from their unit and withheld their rental form, so they don’t qualify for rent payments from income support. So when they come back from treatment, ready to turn a new page in their lives, the first thing they face is a paperwork battle with the housing and income support system to get the support they need. They also return from treatment in serious debt, homeless, faced with the daunting task of reuniting their family under these conditions and under high stress. Great for addictions recovery. This multi-departmental policy failure causes the housing policy crisis I am talking about here.
Waiting lists for public housing are so long that 100-plus families are living in rental units paid for by income support. I’ve demonstrated previously that our income support system traps people in poverty by, for example, cutting people off as soon as they make any extra income, so it is not surprising to learn that Northern Properties is having trouble collecting rent from people when the income support system cuts off support before they are able to manage on their own.
Now Northern Properties say they will no longer accept new tenants who are on income support. This adds to already existing challenges. I have heard of tenants without running water for months at a time being refused transfers to new apartments and of Northern Properties refusing to sign new leases when people on income support are sharing an apartment and one tenant leaves.
I seek unanimous consent to complete my statement. Mahsi.
---Unanimous consent granted
Mr. Speaker, we know that our housing system is unsustainable. We have imposed a limit on the number of housing units in all communities, but there is a clear need for more public housing in Yellowknife. With a 4 percent vacancy rate, apartments are sitting empty here while people in treatment programs are being evicted. Renting market housing through the Income Support Program does not work for the landlords, does not work for the GNWT or the people who we are trying to help. Why not rent these vacant apartments through the Housing Corporation and make them available as public housing under a much more stable system that will actually support those who need it? I will have questions. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On many occasions I have stood up in this House and spoke on the crisis of mental health and addictions in the Northwest Territories. However, today I will speak to one that tends to get overlooked on far too many times and that’s dealing with prescription drug use, specifically pain killers.
Pain killers are very effective in treating acute pain and chronic pain and pain near the end of life. However, these pain killers can be highly addictive and easily misused and can be fatal at high doses or when combined with alcohol or other sedating drugs. This really affects not only the individual, it affects our health care system and also affects the families who are trying to help their relations who are dealing with these addictions.
In the NWT and also jurisdictions across Canada, we do have a fragmented, unsystematic and insufficient data and monitoring of prescription drug use, misuse and the death that’s caused by overdose from prescription drugs.
Across Canada there has been an increase in the demand for addictions treatment programs for people who are addicted to prescription drugs, and we need to do more to regulate the pills themselves and users that they are approved for. We need to take this into the hospitals and to the health centres to make more information readily available to physicians, to families, to the patients and, as I said, to the physicians about their prescribing practices and also talk about the intervention to their patients who might be experiencing some of these addictions.
In 2013 the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse released a report, entitled “First They Do No Harm: Responding to Canada’s Prescription Drug Crises.” In that report there are many recommendations, some of them alluding to a standardized pan-Canadian surveillance system, a Canada-wide prescription monitoring program, strengthening regulations and a review of legislation related to the safety of these drugs. We also need to do more education and empower the public about prescription drug misuse.
Now is the time for action, and time is very critical. As we continue to talk about it, there are people that are continuing battles with these addictions, and I think the time is now to take action on this. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the past year I’ve been very vocal about my concerns with aspects of the Education Renewal and Innovation Project as proposed by ECE. I’ve questioned the Minister with varying degrees of success. In some cases I conducted my own research and then questioned the Minister. It has been a frustrating experience for both me and my constituents because good information has been hard to come by.
Today I will give voice to the words of numerous constituents who have contacted me and other MLAs, expressing their concerns about reduced funding to the Yellowknife school boards. These are constituents who have taken the time to review all the material that Education, Culture and Employment is using to justify the implementation of junior kindergarten. These are highly educated parents who care deeply about the quality of education for all children in the NWT.
Here’s a portion of one letter: “One of the goals of the Department of Education, Culture and Employment and the school boards in the NWT is to invest in the education of children. While junior kindergarten is an excellent program for the children of the NWT, the funds cut from school boards to fund junior kindergarten will be at the expense of students from kindergarten to Grade 12. I believe the long-term effects of this funding cut will be a reduction in student achievement in the NWT.”
From another letter: “In my experience with the Saskatchewan government renewal process carried out over 10 years, I heard from the then-Premiers that any new program had to be funded with new money. This would mean that to add junior kindergarten, another grade would have to be deleted or the government come up with new money. Both Premiers also believed that downloading responsibility for funding cuts to lower levels of government was the ultimate in political cowardliness.”
A third quote, Mr. Speaker: “I am totally disgusted with the incompetent way that the introduction of junior kindergarten has been introduced in the NWT. I’ve never seen anything as destructive done by a government in my life.”
One constituent has asked questions that I would like to see answered as well: “How do you add more students, lower the budget and keep the same pupil-teacher ratio? Could you explain to me how the same level of education can be maintained with the addition of junior kindergarten and the slashing of $698,000 of the Yellowknife Catholic Schools’ budget?”
Yellowknifers feel that they are being penalized twice over. Not only are their children’s programs being affected but their tax dollars are being used elsewhere.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
One last quote: “To take away the surplus, which, by the way, comes from my tax dollars, is nothing more than blatant theft of the monies that pay for my children’s education and special needs children who have to be accommodated by the school districts by order of Education, Culture and Employment. So not only am I displeased but also very disappointed that our elected officials would attempt to ram this scheme down taxpayers’ throats, most of whom are in the major centres and are the ones being robbed.”
The implementation of junior kindergarten at the expense of the other school grades, kindergarten to Grade 12, needs to be reviewed and reconsidered. I will have questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment later on. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, before we begin today, I too support early childhood education opportunities in every single one of our communities. I also support the immediate need of those 10 communities that desperately need this opportunity. However, we have an Education Minister who would rather wield divisional politics amongst urban versus rural communities. This Minister should be building bridges, not finding ways to burn them down.
I demand the Minister to immediately show this Assembly any degree of opposition of support against any small community when they need their early childhood education needs met. I also demand this Minister to put any single statement before the House that shows that any Yellowknife MLA has ever obstructed any opportunity for these communities, because we too believe their children need good support. I further demand that he recognizes that all Yellowknife MLAs support the principles of early childhood education. It’s time he starts recognizing that and telling the world that this is happening. We’re not against these opportunities; we support them. We want to be part of the solution.
So I ask the Minister to stop discombobulating the issue. He’s the one causing the problem. If the Education Minister became aware of this, maybe now is the appropriate time. He’s Minister of Education of the whole NWT, not just which communities he feels like it.
All children in Yellowknife matter, their families matter. All NWT children matter, their families matter. Let’s start seeing it from this particular Minister, but no, he’d rather pit school board against school board, child against child. Yellowknife MLAs want to be part of the solution, as I said earlier, but no, instead of holding up the promise of standards of education amongst all the children of the Northwest Territories, he has found a way, as I said earlier, to pit board against board, people against people, students against students.
We need some real hard discussions right now. While Yellowknife school boards are under financial attack, they see what’s coming. The question now starts to arise, maybe we should be discussing how we should turn back our school boards under the administration of this Education Minister, because frankly, Yellowknife citizens are already paying territorial taxes and we’re paying local school taxes. He has gagged the superintendents, and maybe our teachers will finally be paid fairly, just like every other NWT teacher. I’ll have questions later today. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to seek unanimous consent to go to recognition of visitors in the gallery, item 6 on the Order Paper, please.
