Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member's statement, I talked about early childhood development. I realize that we have programs, prenatal programs, and pediatricians, midwives, healthy families, other education programs, daycare, and so on. I would like to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment if he would agree to work with the Minister of Health and Social Services to look at other early childhood development initiatives to support the development of our children? Thank you.
Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Currently we are committed to working with the Minister of Health and Social Services and his department with the Right from the Start early childhood development action plan. There are 19 areas of action in there. I believe my department is focused on five of them, the Department of Health and Social Services on five, and then jointly we are working on nine of those areas of action. It is not only the Department of Health and Social Services. I think it is very important that, when we look at early childhood programming funding initiatives, that we also work with our Indigenous partners, our governments, working alongside Aboriginal Head Start and all of our partners and stakeholders who are interested and have an investment in early childhood. Yes, I am committed to working with the Minister and Department of Health and Social Services.
I would like to ask the Minister if he is aware of programs that provide financial support to parents to stay at home to facilitate the development of their children.
I know there are some programs out there, Moms and Tots, mothers and babies, that invite all families to participate in those programs. We have made increases and improvements to the Canada Child Benefit, the NWT Child Benefit. That puts more dollars into low- to modest-income families. We also provide daycares and funding for day homes through subsidies, where, if parents want to have a day home, we can work on helping them provide that, possibly having their kids participate in the program, as well. Obviously, there are still other options. The Member did mention one in his statement. We are not aware of any of those kinds of programs here in the NWT.
As the Minister just indicated, I am particularly aware of that one program that I spoke of. There are probably many all over the world. Can the Minister commit to looking at best practices from other jurisdictions in early childhood development?
Earlier I mentioned the "Right from the Start" early childhood development action plan that we have. That was based on best practices. We worked with our stakeholders, and we worked with the Department of Health and Social Services to develop that. When it comes to early childhood development and the importance of it, we are always looking at best practices throughout the country and other jurisdictions, but that action plan itself was based on best practices at the time.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister agree to begin the process of evaluating junior kindergarten as a long-term objective, but starting now with his department? Thank you.
We are both just over five months into the territorial-wide implementation of the junior kindergarten program throughout the Northwest Territories. I did commit to standing committee and I have committed to the evaluation of the program on an ongoing basis, so, yes, we will commit to that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Deh Cho.
