Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just for clarification, we are fully funding implementation of junior kindergarten. The Member asked questions about the surplus situation. Although the DECs across the territory have a combined surplus of $10 million, the Member's riding, the Deh Cho DEC, is currently in an accumulated deficit position as a result of onetime costs such as termination benefits and employee removals. The department is working with the DDEC to come up with a plan to recover that deficit. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, under the original plan for funding junior kindergarten, we had asked education authorities to cover $2.76 million through a reallocation of existing funding that was provided, which was about 1.76 per cent. This amount will now be covered by the $2.7 million in new funding that was announced yesterday.

As mentioned, there are a lot of applications right across the board. The Youth Contributions is one that's run through MACA, and any community can access that program. Just apply to the regional office. I encourage all small communities that want to apply to that program to apply as soon as possible in the new fiscal year, because I believe it is on a firstcome, firstserved basis.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled "Aurora College Annual Report, 2015-2016." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I have said many times in this House, it is going to be implemented in all the schools in the Northwest Territories in the 2017-18 school year, not next fiscal year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. After the announcement yesterday, staff at the department is going to be contacting all the superintendents of all the boards. Once we get those initial discussions completed, I myself will have a meeting with all the board chairs to look at how we are going to be allocating this additional funding throughout the schools in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I do believe I just answered that question, but the department is currently working with the education authority superintendents to determine how to allocate the additional funding.

Schools will be making their own decisions regarding the details of the classes, the teachers, and the programs that best meet the needs of their students. As I mentioned, we believe that our education authorities have the leadership and the financial management skills. They do it on a regular annual basis when enrolments are low, that they were able to shift things around, and we believe that our school authorities have the tools to do that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Before the meetings that we had with all the board chairs and superintendents in December, there was a request for all our education authorities to come back and find money to help implement junior kindergarten. We've made an additional investment that brought the numbers down, so it is the 2.7 that we are looking for, thank you, just for confirmation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have various programs throughout all the departments that focus on youth within the GNWT. Justice has some funding, obviously, and the ECE and our schools have funding. MACA has sports and recreation and youth funding programs.

We can provide the Member with all the applicationtype funding that we give to youth programming, share it with him so that they can look at the appropriate ways to fill out an application should we want to bring the Odd Squad up to the NWT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.