Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment in regards to the early childhood infrastructure fund. Currently the fund is set at $1 million every year, and I'm wondering if there is a plan to increase this fund given ECE's current child care goals? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No one would like to see this fund increased more than myself. I could take a win right now but I don't have a million dollars in my back pocket. The budget is, you know, it's before committee right now. And so the Member is aware what the budget for this upcoming year is, and it will be $1 million. In the future, I'm sure the budget will increase but it is not in the immediate future. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, during a March 2022 public hearing with the Standing Committee on Social Development, the Minister and staff stated that increases to the fund would be made in, quote, "considerations for project going forward based on need." So I'm wondering if the fund isn't intended to increase, how potentially would the Minister be able to accomplish this based on need, and what would be used as determinants of need? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And this is one avenue that organizations can pursue to get new child care infrastructure or assist with that. Indigenous governments also have their own child care agreements with the federal government and so there could be funds through there. The early childhood infrastructure fund is proposalbased and so "proposals" very widely in terms of what they're proposing, the cost of what they're proposing. But what the fund is intended to do is support more spaces. So adding spaces to existing programs or creating new spaces.
We looked at communities where there is established demands, such as Yellowknife. We also look at communities with no child care to ensure that there is equitable access. The proposals need to demonstrate a need for the early learning and child care in their community. There must also be a plan for the delivery of a licensed program once it becomes operational. It's not just we want a building; we also the department also needs to see a plan for once that building is in use. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, based on the high demand of child care in some communities, I'm wondering if this fund, if it is able to provide full funding to some programs based on what is left in the pot or if the department of education has a maximum of what they're prepared to provide to child care centres? Thank you.
Sorry, Mr. Speaker. I might have missed the question, but we have $1 million in the fund, and based on the programs that apply that's how we make a determination. So sometimes there may only be a few programs that actually qualify based on the proposal. And so those programs, as we've seen in the past, can get some significant amounts of funding. And I apologize if I missed the Member's statement. I will say that we have also overspent. I believe we spent $1.28 million last year on this because there was a number of good proposals, and there was a demonstrated need that we wanted to support. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my previous question was in regards to whether or not the fund can fund an entire project or if it can only fund a portion of a project. But my next question and if the Minister is able to answer that, great. And the reason that I ask this is that in my statement I also talked about the Yellowknife Daycare Association who paid just over $4 million before the pandemic, before inflation, before the high cost higher cost of building in the Northwest Territories for 104 spaces. If the goal of ECE is to create 300 new spaces, the $1 million absolutely won't cut it. And I appreciate the Minister acknowledging that he too would like to see an increase in this fund. And so my concern is that if for some communities who don't have the ability to go out and do some own source revenues, if daycare centres are kind of being dictated what their increases can be, there's some concern about how they're going to turn around and pay for a potentially really high cost of building infrastructure spaces. And so I'm wondering if the GNWT is expecting to plan for some or some infrastructure increases within the child care agreement through the federal government going forward to address this huge infrastructure deficit and this need in the territory? Thank you.
Thank you. So every time we speak to the federal government, we talk about the cost of infrastructure in the Northwest Territories. I think that we're all aware of the cost but when we speak to federal officials and politicians, it's clear that they're often taken aback by the cost. So we do our best at the officials level, at the political level, to hammer home, you know, the reality of the cost in the North and the changes we've seen over the past few years. We've seen costs double, triple, and even more than that. So we are working with the feds on this. We are doing our best to look at what we have internally and how we can best use that and at the same time looking for additional resources from the federal government. Thank you.
