Caroline Cochrane

The act in section 27(1), again, I am going to paraphrase because I didn't write it all down. It says that children who are between the ages of six and 16 shall attend, and actually, there is a financial penalty if they don't attend. I believe it is $100; we don't want to make students afraid of school. It says that the parents shall ensure that the child attends, as well. Under that, there is nothing that says that they have to; so, no, children under six or over 16, it does not say that they shall attend.

I will commit to working with the MLA, but I also will commit to actually challenging the MLA to come to me and explain to me why, in his opinion, not on the floor here, but in his opinion, that our regional directors don't have that ability, because that is what their job is. I am willing to meet with the MLA and discuss why it should be that headquarters would have to go into the regions versus the people whom we have hired to do that. It might be a bigger issue. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

When I was travelling to the three communities three or four times, I had heard from staff and from students, et cetera, that they want to have great programming and that we need to have programming for northern students. People were a little bit concerned about national and international students, but it's a good thing. The reality is that our numbers in the Northwest Territories will make it challenging if we didn't look outside of the Northwest Territories.

I want to emphasize, the post-secondary that we provided in the Northwest Territories has to be for northern people based on Northern...

Yes. Actually, we're going to be presenting to standing committee as well on June 5th, so I'm going to give a little bit of heads up to what we're presenting on June 5th, I suppose. We've completed the survey. We've gone across the Northwest Territories. We've reached actually almost 750 surveys. I don't have the number on hand. We'll present it to standing committee. We did a real focus on youth, 29 and under, which I'm very happy to report that we've actually been very successful in getting those voices. With that, we're still breaking down what the vision will be. That process is still...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know that I am breaking convention a little bit because I don't really have a constituent, but I do want to recognize the women who are in the House today who are watching the proceedings. I think it is pretty evident that there are not enough women in the House, and so I am really proud to see them and, like my colleague, I am hoping that I will see their names on ballots. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that, on Tuesday, June 4, 2019, I will move that Bill 57: An Act to Amend the Employment Standards Act be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We've often heard it all along saying, "we need to get this right." With that polytechnic, we need to get this right. This isn't going to be something that's done too fast. The first thing was developing our vision, trying to find out what are our strengths; what programs should be done. One of the critiques that was in our college foundational report is we tried to do too much for everyone. Sometimes, when you try to do too much, like over 200 mandate question areas, you don't get enough done to address them all. You get spread too thin. We are trying to figure out what our specialization...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As for the term "lobbying," direct lobbying to build our polytechnic university, at this point, we have not. I know that the federal government is working with us. They just gave us $4 million, I believe, for the Centre for Mining and Industry in Fort Smith that was recently opened, which I attended just a couple of months ago. Word on the street is that they are actually looking at post-secondary universities in the north all over, so we are trying to get in on that team to find out what they are doing and what their interests are. Once we have an implementation plan...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I remember, actually, when the first EDI was done a few years back. It was only six years ago, so I think some of that is baseline data, when you first start. I mean it's only been a couple of times that we have done this. I am hoping that it will get better. In all honestly, "what is going on" is the question we all need to be asking, so that is why we are working really closely with Health and Social Services on this issue. We are all concerned. It is not okay.

If our children went from 38 percent to 42 percent who have developmental deficiencies before they are ready...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We are doing a lot, and we need to keep going. Like I said, we have increased the supplement to daycare providers directly. We have increased the supplement to daycare workers who are licensed, all those are licensed. If they are not licensed, they don't get the supplements. We are doing the training for people. We have expanded our post-secondary education for people. We did JK. It's huge; 552 kids in the Northwest Territories are getting free daycare for four-year-olds. We are looking at parenting in our programs for in school in a couple year.

I want to challenge a...