Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are also addressed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I want to follow up on my Member’s statement about college daycares and the need for our students to have some place to put their children while they go to school.
There certainly is a lack of affordable daycare for students. As I mentioned, it keeps them in a financial hole and I think it keeps many of them in poverty. It’s not where our students should be if we expect them or want them to gain learning and to gain accreditation and get good jobs.
I’d like to start off by asking the Minister, I mentioned the child care subsidy in my statement and I’d like to ask him if he could provide the House with data on the use of the Childcare Subsidy Program. Was it fully subscribed in the last fiscal year? It is my understanding that it was not. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have that detailed information, but we can certainly provide the breakdown of the use of the Childcare Subsidy Program over the last year or last few years, and whether it’s been maximized or the usage of that particular subsidy program. We can provide that. Mahsi.
Thanks to the Minister. I look forward to that information. I’d like to ask the Minister, in terms of daycare and the opportunities to provide daycare on campus and for our students, I’d like to know if the Minister is willing to review with the Aurora College Board and the Aurora College president the benefits of on-campus daycare. Will he commit to establishing a daycare if only at one campus in Fort Smith where we currently have our Early Childhood Education program?
Those are discussions that we will be having with the college. There are certain initiatives happening in the college, the review of the overall training initiatives, so there will be those discussions. Aurora College with its three main campuses, serving the 32 communities, are going through their growth and objectives long-term plans. So they will be meeting, I believe in June, and they’ll be discussing this particular subject, as well, to my understanding.
Inuvik and the other two campuses, as the Member alluded to, provide child care programs. Inuvik students have access through the Children First Daycare as well. So there are some facilities that are available within the communities, but I understand where the Member is coming from. We provide a subsidy program to the students and we’ll continue to do that. At the same time, I will be addressing this with the Aurora College Board of Governors. Mahsi.
Thanks to the Minister for that commitment. I look forward to hearing sooner rather than later, I hope, that the college is willing to look at developing on-campus daycares. Certainly, if there are not enough students with children on campus to fill a daycare, I’m sure that the rest of the community would fill it up.
If the Minister or if the college can’t establish an on-campus daycare, as I mentioned in my statement, there are a couple of daycares in Nunavut where the spaces are reserved for college students. So I’d like to know if the Minister would consider that.
Will the college, will ECE consider reserving spaces in community daycares for college students and their children? Thank you.
Mahsi. Those are the types of discussions that we need to have with the Board of Governors. As you know, they’re arm’s reach from us. We provide funding to them. It’s the board that makes the decisions on where the money should be expended and we work closely with them, I work closely with the board chair of the Board of Governors. Every opportunity to meet with them at the annual event through the meetings, but these are some of the areas that Members have alluded to. It is an initiative that’s been earmarked before. So I’m sure the Board of Governors will be discussing that and I will be reminding the board members as well. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Speaker. Thanks again to the Minister. The concerns of the students were heard loud and clear when we met with Yellowknife students a number of weeks ago. The value of an on-campus daycare at a training venue is something which I want to make sure that the Minister has understood. So in Fort Smith, for instance, if there was an on-campus daycare, I would imagine that the funding for the Childcare Funding Subsidy Program could be put into an on-campus daycare, and it probably wouldn’t cost all that much more to get that established. It would also provide a venue to train our professionals.
Does the Minister realize that we can have an on-campus daycare that services two purposes? Thank you.
Mahsi. I’d like to thank the Member, as well, for meeting with the students, because it is very important to listen to those students, to hear their ideas, concerns and suggestions. Those areas are being brought to our attention here today, so we will be following up with those ideas particularly to Iqaluit and also Yukon College. Some of the examples brought to our attention here today I will be addressing with the college as well. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
