Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to address the lack of daycare facilities at our Aurora College campuses. In the NWT we have Aurora College and the government is rightly proud of providing post-secondary education to our residents so they can achieve a higher education in their home territory. NWT residents can, and do, enrol in the many Aurora College programs, and with hard work and effort they can graduate successfully. That is unless they are parents and need child care.
None of our three Aurora College campuses has daycare on site. Students who have little or no family support in their college community must rely on existing daycare services in that community, and the well-documented reality is that there is a definite lack of daycare in our three college communities. Students with children must bear an extra financial burden to complete their schooling.
Women are the majority of students in post-secondary settings, and they also make up a larger proportion of student parents. Those students who can’t make arrangements with family are forced to take on jobs to pay for outside daycare, cutting into their study time and threatening their chances of graduating. Some students resort to bringing their children to class, a distraction for other students and not an optimal learning environment for the mom or the dad.
Yes, Education, Culture and Employment has a Childcare Subsidy Program for students, but from what I hear it is not easily accessible and funding levels fall far short of actual child care costs. Aurora College administration should be looking at other post-secondary institutions that run daycares on campus and use them as a model to develop its own service. They won’t have to look far.
Nakwaye Ku is a non-profit child care centre for children of students, staff and the general public, located at the Yukon College Ayamdigut Campus. It serves a dual purpose as a daycare and as a practicum setting for students in the Early Childhood Development program. ECD students can observe, evaluate and teach real subjects in a real ECD setting.
Another example at Nunatta Campus in Iqaluit: 12 spaces are reserved for the Kids on the Beach Daycare for children of Nunavut Arctic College students. The Rankin Inlet campus daycare has space for 21.
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
This government has a stated goal to increase our focus on early childhood development programming. We have a brand new revised early childhood framework. Daycare centres at our college campuses would fit nicely into actions coming from that framework. Is it doable? Absolutely. Will it happen? I challenge the Aurora College to make it so. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
