Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, it's my understanding that from the conversations I'm having that $10 a day childcare helps families, but it seems to be hurting ELCC operators at the scale. So the issue is not so much that the wage ceiling as the Minister said in one of her earlier replies today. It's the funding that's allocated by the GNWT. So what I would like to know, Mr. Speaker -- and maybe I'll just try and put it more clearly -- is operators can't make up the difference due to caps on what they can charge families, the Minister mentioned fundraising, I believe. Is there any other way right now currently that the Minister can see to making things more manageable for operators at a larger scale? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Great Slave. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there are certainly some options for other funding. I did use the example of fundraising. If there is another source that a childcare facility is looking at bringing in to access funding, certainly would want to know about it and be able to work alongside the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to explore that option. We certainly do want our childcare facilities to stay open and stay operational.
I think a couple of things here, Mr. Speaker, I will absolutely acknowledge that the original agreement was signed before extreme inflation across the country, and this has certainly been something that has been routinely raised at our federal, territorial, provincial tables by multiple jurisdictions, and there have been some responses to that in allowing different operators to bring up their wages so that there is parity between them.
And the other piece I wanted to raise for the Member is because the wage grid hasn't been fully implemented, it means that those increases in payment have not been felt by our early childhood educators. But what I can say here, Mr. Speaker, is every single childcare provider across the territory saw an increase to their funding post implementation of this agreement. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister for that. One option that has been floated to me by the board member of this operator is possibly asking families to have a membership fee, but that doesn't seem to be allowed by the regulations. Is that something that the Minister could contemplate? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when I received the letter from the Member, I did go through it line by line. I highlighted different sections of the letter and different pieces that were raised by the childcare provider, and membership fees was one of them and so that is something that I have put to the department and would be happy to loop back around once we've had the opportunity to look into that. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And just to note that part of what I was trying to highlight in my Member's statement, and in my last question a few minutes ago, was that adult education is not just about job training but it also can include parents wanting to improve their literacy and learning in conjunction with their young and not-so-young children. So my question now is about family based literacy and learning.
My understanding is that the GNWT was exploring a model of early childhood learning that was centered around providing resources and involving all the family members; however, that seems to have fallen off the radar with the introduction of junior kindergarten. So can the Minister explain what is ECE doing to promote a family-based literacy and learning model instead of just focusing on school-based learning? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for coming back to this question.
Mr. Speaker, it certainly has not fallen off the table, and the Department of Education, Culture and Employment does afford some funding for family literacy and then also does afford funding, like, directly to communities, directly to NGOs, and then also enlists the NWT Literacy Council to afford some of that. So in 2024-2025, ECE provided the NWT Literacy Council with $420,000 in funding. And this funding is used to train, mentor, and support community members to design, develop, and deliver community-based family literacy programs. And the importance here is working with -- or NWT literacy works with communities to ensure that that programming is culturally relevant and is available to be used for all official languages in the Northwest Territories.
In addition to that, ECE also delivers the community literacy development fund, and this is financial help for community organizations that want to do local programs to increase literacy skills and also literacy awareness, and so we've got kind of two kind of core main pieces there that still do afford funding to communities for that.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you for that answer. So in my discussions with the NWT Literacy Council, I understand that there's huge demand for those family literacy programs and they could definitely be much expanded to meet that demand. So, in this era of fiscal sustainability, has the department examined not only the costs, you know, in grant and contribution funding but also the short and long-term benefits that could come from an even more concerted focus on family literacy programs? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for that question. There's certainly not only literacy programs happening through these organizations, there's also awareness and encouragement happening even from our schools themselves to encourage literacy in the home. And with our new training certification wage grid as well with our ELCCs, this type of work in reading to children and such is also, as we know, happening in our daycares and our day home providers as well. And so it's not just a solution that requires more funding, although the NWT Literacy Council does amazing work, and certainly want to see opportunities like that grow in the territory but, really, it's about looking at this and determining how we all can help support literacy across the territory. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Final supplementary. Member from Yellowknife North.
