Merci, Monsieur le President. My statement dealt with the oftenpromised federal territorial agreement to bring affordable child care to all parents in the NWT. The ECE Minister is quoted in the media as saying in some media saying "we'll have this agreement by the end of the calendar year."
But I'd like the Minister to tell us the number of child care spaces the agreement will support and at what cost per day. Merci, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member stated, I've already said publicly we should have this agreement finalized by the end of the year, in the coming weeks, in the coming week. It's very close. That being said, it's not finalized and so I can't say how many spaces, what costs, etcetera.
If you look at every other deal that's been made, though, there is some indications that there's a reduction in fees at the end of 2022 by a certain amount, and after five years there's a desire to get to around $10 a day average. So there are some things that have appeared in every other agreement. But I can't say what we are going to see in this agreement until we sign something. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that sneak preview. The Minister has also been quoted as saying that the lack of physical spaces will challenge universal affordable child care in the NWT. How is the Minister going to ensure that there are safe and appropriate places to put the new child care spaces in all NWT communities? Merci, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So ECE currently has funding for startup, new child care space startup to help programs get off the ground. Of course, we have the $1 million child care infrastructure fund that we're a few years into now. As well, we have been prioritizing the communities who have no child care services for that fund. While negotiating the terms of the new agreement, the Canadawide agreement that we hope to sign here in the very near future, we've been considering how we can utilize that agreement as well as some of the existing funding that we already have to construct new spaces. I noted earlier that we have reviewed the current funding programs and given that we're on the cusp of a new agreement, perhaps some of those funding programs can be adjusted to help get new infrastructure spaces off the ground as well as has been discussed in this House, ECE's capital standards for schools now allows for child care space to be built in new school facilities as well. So there's a number of ways that we are working on the infrastructure issue. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. The August renewal of the CanadaNWT Early Learning and Child Care Agreement provided a onetime earmarked $2.5 million to support development of our early child care work force, childhood care work force. I want to ask the Minister whether he can tell us if that money's actually rolling out now and how many child care workers have been trained or have their skills upgraded? Merci, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the money is rolling out. It is supporting a number of initiatives. Of course, we have the early learning child care diploma program at Aurora College that this money's helping fund. For the first time now that there is a distancebased early learning child care certificate, that people don't have to come to the campus to take. They can take it in their home communities. There's work on dual credit courses for interested secondary senior secondary school students. As well, we are supporting college Nordique to deliver postsecondary programming in French for early learning child care providers. We have 30 scholarships of $5,000 for students pursuing further education in early learning and child care. So we have a number of different initiatives.
There are approximately 300 childhood educators who are benefitting from some of the additional training that is being offered as well beyond those college courses. So there's a number of different initiatives that are available to prospective early learning and child care educators as well as current ones. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. It would be great to get further updates on that money being spent.
So planning for universal child care in the NWT, it's not new ground. There was the 2015 feasibility study of universal affordable daycare in the Northwest Territories, and the department has some of its own action plans. But how is the Minister building upon this work to finally develop a comprehensive plan for universal child care across the NWT, and how will a new agreement with the federal government make this happen? Merci, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member mentioned, this is not new ground. Over the years, there's been a number of much work done on the types of programs and research into the needs of young children and how we can better support them and how we can better support parents with their child care needs. And so this work has been done by the Department of Health, by E, C and E, and the officials at the department have looked at all of this work spanning many years, and as well, they have gone out to have discussions with child care providers, Indigenous governments, and so on. And all of that is informing both the negotiations that we are currently in with the federal government as well as the 2030 Early Learning and Childhood Strategy. That strategy will be a very highlevel document without specific actions. That's generally what strategies are; they're guiding documents. But as with many federal funding agreements, there's already a requirement for an action plan. So the I expect there will be a detailed action plan under the Canadawide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement that will spell out exactly how we are going to spend this money and make these improvements to the child care sector. So I can assure the Member we will have a plan. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Nunakput.
