Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For the past 35 years, the Yellowknife Day Care Association has been providing quality daycare services in a downtown GNWT-owned building, but now they’ve reached the absolute critical impasse and they need our help more than ever.
ECE has come to the strange decision that it is now time that the daycare has to go, and they’ve given them their notice. That’s right. Minister Jackson Lafferty is telling these kids it’s time to go. So, as each kid, as the daycare starts the day by turning on the lights and they get the important services of child care up and running for 55 kids, those kids will now have to find a new home.
The Yellowknife Day Care Association is a treasure to the downtown. They provide quality, reliable, affordable options for parents. But Minister Lafferty has determined as of July 31, 2016, that’ll be their last day. That’s right, Mr. Speaker. Next summer these kids will be kicked to the streets. Why? Well, I can only speculate as to why, but the truth is we haven’t really heard a solid or honest answer why they need to be rushed out the door. To be fair, the YK Day Care knows and certainly agrees that the building that they’re in is coming to the end of its useful life.
So while the smiles and laughter may be singing away in the air of the daycare each and every day, it’s true that building may be tired, but there are no, and I repeat there are no health and safety issues with that particular building, even the GNWT’s own studies say that that’s true. Yes, it has gone along and its useful life may be coming near the end, and the building may be older, true, but by seniors’ standards, it barely is a senior. It’s not that old. So why now? Why rush the daycare out the door before it’s ready to take the plunge in the open market and buy their own building?
They have been saving money for years, but they don’t quite have enough yet to do it on their own. So, if Minister Lafferty would support this daycare so they could get set up right, they would be in a position to succeed, but not just that, they could also expand a desperately needed area such as a daycare our community needs.
Let me remind Minister Lafferty that this daycare offers 55 child care spaces each and every day. The Minister personally knows about children and how important they are. He’s got a lot of kids, for goodness sakes. He should know. All I can tell you is that we have 12 out of the 24 licenced spaces allotted for children between the ages of one and…
I’m sorry, Mr. Hawkins, your time for Member’s statement has expired.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was just trying and squeeze in the last couple of words before I asked. I seek unanimous consent to conclude my Member’s statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
What I was trying to say is this daycare has 12 out of the 24 licenced allotted spaces for children in Yellowknife between the ages of one and two years old. Those are precious spaces because they’re critical so parents can go back to work, otherwise what would they do? So I’m asking the Minister to stop and think about what they’re doing before they kick the kids to the street.
There are solutions. This government has given money to other daycares. A couple years ago, our government gave $1 million to one that needed it desperately. So the fact is there are solutions out there and we have to stop trying to make them all fit the same mold.
In closing, the solution would be less than half a kilometre of highway, and I choose the kids over the highway. The last thing I’ll say is the Minister knows how much he loves his picture in the paper with kids each and every time. Perhaps we should get a picture of the kids from this daycare on the street with their lunch bags and their little suitcases with nowhere to go and we can shame this Minister into doing something. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
