Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
What is considered to be a living wage in each of the communities where childcare is expected, and what is our plan to ensure that childcare providers can pay that wage to workers as part of the subsidized program? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Great Slave. Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So as most people are aware, we recently signed a deal with the Government of Canada for around $50 million, and that is to help us transition to a system of universal childcare. There are a number of aspects to this. The first aspect that is rolling out across Canada is to reduce fees for parents by 50 percent on average.
The Member raises some good points. There are other issues. Staffing has always been an issue. And in terms of a living wage, we don't have I don't have the stats for living wages in every community. I know that in some of the regional centres, it's around $25 an hour.
Currently, ECE provides retention bonuses or additional subsidies to early childhood staff based on their level of education and so those staff do receive up to $12,000 a year in subsidies from ECE. And starting in the upcoming fiscal year, which is just around the corner, there is going to be an additional retention incentive bonus for all early learning and childcare staff, and that is until we get a wage grid in place so that early childhood educators are recognized for the work that they do and are paid appropriately. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm glad that the Minister answered my next question so I can have one additional one.
So my next question is with the ongoing housing crisis in the NWT, we have a shortage of day home spaces that are available in several of our communities, as well there may be issues with housing any workers that we may be able to recruit given low wages and not meeting the living wage. How is the department working to remove the barriers in place to create new day home and daycare infrastructure? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And for the past couple years, we've had an early childhood infrastructure fund. It's a million dollars a year. There's been great uptake on that. But the fact is that we need third parties to want to provide childcare. In many communities, there it's already happening Indigenous governments are doing it, nonprofits are doing it. But some of the difficulties in communities without childcare is the lack of a provider, and in other communities there's just no children under the age of five. There's no need for childcare. And yet other communities, they would prefer that their children stay with family members. So there's a number of reasons that some communities don't have childcare facilities, and that may be always the case.
In terms of what we're doing to increase the number of family day homes, now is an opportune time to get the word out there that running a family day home is a good business opportunity. And we are trying to expand childcare spaces and so we want to encourage people to look into that opportunity. We have funding. If you want to become a day home provider to make the necessary renovations, do some of the upgrades that are required, and I believe in the future we're going to start doing more promotion of that because we want more people to get into that industry. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yeah, the Minister raises some other issues that I sort of struggled to wrap my head around.
As we look at this subsidy, one of the things that I've been hearing is that in the communities without licensed daycare spots, a lot of times it's family, it's grandparents, all of that, that are providing the daycare or the services. So to me, it seems to make sense if we could look out a way outside of the box in order to pay family members in those communities so that the communities can actually get some benefit out of this subsidy.
So is the government committed to finding a way to look at different methods of childcare and thinking outside the box as we don't tend to fit that southern Canadian model all the time? And are we going to look at maybe paying grandparents and other relatives to take care of children? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And this has been raised a number of times. And no, we are not going to be exploring those avenues. There has been a desire from some people to have us subsidize more than just licensed centres, so unlicensed centres or family members, but unfortunately we can't be everything to everyone and we have to pick our lane. And so what we're focusing on is early licensed early learning childcare spaces. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions, final supplementary, Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it's my understanding that over this weekend that there has been meetings of day home providers, etcetera, to discuss the government's plan. It is my understanding that they are not happy with what is happening with the fee subsidy.
Can the Minister commit to arranging a meeting with those stakeholders in order to hear from them directly what their issues are and perhaps modifying the rollout in order to address their concerns? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since March, probably March 5th, there's been a number of sessions, a number of meetings between day home providers and staff, and those meetings are going to continue. The difficulty is that, you know, we have a lot of childcare centres and those centres are nonprofits, and they are there to for the purpose of providing childcare. They're not money making ventures. And so they already have the idea that they want to do what they can to make childcare accessible.
And so the family day homes, on the other hand, are they're businesses. And so it's perhaps they have they have some different motivations. And we're asking them to do something for the greater good but it's not necessarily their role as some of them see it. And so there have been some some difficulties. We are trying to work through those. I've asked the department to ensure that we are being as flexible as we can and that we are ensuring that parents aren't going to see any or the parents are still going to see that reduction that we promised, that 50 percent on average. So there's ongoing meetings. There's we're happy to have as many meetings as we possibly can. We want to get the information out. We want open lines in communication, and we want parents to see that 50 percent reduction. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Thebacha.
