Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, part of my Member's statement was talking about daycares. I have questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
In April 2018, the federal government announced $7 million dedicated to childcare in the NWT. I'm wondering if there are any plans yet for where some of that money will go and if any of that money would be allocated to communities in Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. Thank you.
Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the Canada and Northwest Territories Early Learning and Childcare Bilateral Agreement was signed. Within that agreement, it's not really designated for communities as much, but within the terms of early childhood development where they have extra money to top up our money, we will be using that for providing things like we are doing ECD, or early childhood development. There used to be a certificate program. We are now doing a diploma program with Aurora College. We have increased our scholarships for people trying to get into early childhood development. It used to be 10 with the territorial funding. Now it is 30 with the federal funding. We have improved our training, as well. We have allocated the monies to areas in early childhood development, but we haven't actually allocated per community. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I would like to ask the Minister if there are any plans toward creating a universal daycare program in the NWT?
At this time, no, we are not looking at a universal daycare program. I want to say that we actually have really subsidized, and I need to actually do some more work on the breakdown of how that looks like. We give money to the daycares directly to subsidize for it, so that they can have lower costs for children. That's based on if they are infants, or the age of the children. The younger the child, the more money daycare providers actually get. We give money to parents. If parents can't afford the daycare or subsidies or the daycare costs, they can come in if they are lower-income and actually get subsidies on top of that from the Education, Culture and Employment. We give money to the workers on a quarterly basis. They provide their attendance sheets. They provide their work, and actually we provide the daycare workers with a subsidy as well to top up their wages.
We are subsidizing both the daycares, the parents, and the workers. I'm not sure, Mr. Speaker, but I think we are doing a lot.
I would like to ask the Minister if the department has a group or groups of people who are working for the department who will assist community groups in establishing daycares for it where daycares don't currently exist.
Yes, absolutely. Actually, getting daycares into the communities is a priority. It's a mandate within this government, the 18th Legislative Assembly. We have 11 communities that don't have daycares, although we are working with a couple of them. Some of them aren't in the Member's ridings. Yes, we have regional coordinators who will go in and support anyone in the communities who is looking up to open up a daycare. We have start-up money. We have health and safety money.
Like I have said, we provide subsidies for the daycares directly. There's a lot of support. We need daycares. There's lot of research that says that, if we can provide early intervention, we have better success for children, so we will do whatever we can to support communities that don't have daycares to get them into their communities. Yes, ask, and we shall help.
Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That's good news. Mr. Speaker, within that specific area where we have individuals working for the department who can establish daycares, we have a daycare and we also have some other programs for individuals where children go to, similar to daycares. I'm wondering if that money could also be used where those people could also be to assist daycares that currently exist to enhance the programs that the current daycares are offering. Thank you.
At this time, no, we are not supporting extra money for people to come in. I think it would be huge. It's a great idea. However, in honesty, it would be huge on daycares. That's based on my background with running daycares. It's that they use volunteers from all over the communities. It's powerful. The centre that I ran, they had speech pathologists coming in and, you know, people from Health and Social Services. We had elders coming in. We have parents coming in. If we started to support, it would be a matter of picking and choosing which ones get money and which ones don't. At this time, we are not doing that. There are other programs that actually support those kinds of endeavours. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
