Jackson Lafferty

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. We have been talking about rolling out the program, phase one, two and three approach. We are at around $7 million over a three-year period. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I did raise cutting some red tape in this House. That is one of the areas we’ve initiated with income support, the reporting mechanism on a monthly basis like we have on a quarterly basis or every six months type of deal. So those with disabilities, we highly recognize them. We want them to have an easier life than all these different reporting mechanisms. Some can’t walk to the office and we recognize that as well. We’ve made some changes in that respect.

We have client service officers working diligently with those clientele that have the disability. Most times the CSO...

Mr. Chair, we’re talking about the junior kindergarten that’s going to be rolled out this particular school year in the fall. It will be a three-year phased-in approach. There will be 29 communities this fall and the following year will be four in regional centres and then the following year, ’16-17 I believe, will be into Yellowknife centres, so seven schools in Yellowknife. It will be a phased-in approach over three years and we’re going to be hovering around the 16 to 1 ratio that we’ve been using for the level of PTR. Once the junior kindergarten is rolled out, anything above and beyond...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The bullying has been the highlight of the day today and throughout all schools across the Northwest Territories it’s a special day for us. We talk about the suspension for those bullies that are bullying the students, and we’ve been dealing with the school boards on how we can develop a plan of action. There is a draft Safe Schools Plan by this department in early June of 2014, working in collaboration with all the school boards to deal with those matters that Member Groenewegen is alluding to, where if there’s going to be a suspension it’s considered as a vacation. We...

Mr. Chair, as indicated earlier, we do have to develop an action plan. Based on that, it will give us a figure of how much it is going to cost us over the long run without the action plan going to be developed. It will be carried forward with next year’s business planning process. For ERI, it’s not in this 2014-15 budget. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. Part of the process is, obviously, to develop the action plan and put it towards the next main estimates for the upcoming year. There are a couple of areas that we should be able to move forward on, but the overall theme of the action plan, once it has developed the cost factor, then we need to put it into the mains and I guess we will request our approval from there from the Legislative Assembly. That’s the process that we’re going through. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the Members for highlighting this as one of the priorities of this government.

These 10 communities that the Member is referring to, the one that that has been highlighted, this will obviously provide child care programming into these 10 communities that we currently don’t have any licenced programming, licenced early childhood programming. So we are capturing those 10 communities.

Part of the discussion I’m hearing is that we’re not providing or supporting these daycares in the communities. We are currently providing subsidies to these daycare...

Mr. Speaker, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment wishes to recognize the dedication and service of the educators who have contributed to the well-being, support and education of our students.

The Northwest Territories Teachers’ Association was founded 60 years ago with just 60 teachers, including those from the Western and Eastern Arctic, eventually becoming a member of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation. As we proudly recognize this anniversary, the NWTTA now represents more than 800 teachers in 49 schools, demonstrating tremendous growth in the territory.

Throughout this growth...

We have to keep in mind that we are providing free junior kindergarten across the whole Northwest Territories, and especially those 10 communities that are without licenced child care programming. The communities will definitely be benefiting from this program that we’re initiating. It’s a three-year phased approach, so the daycare, the home care operators… Again, I must emphasize that we are providing the supporting mechanism in place. It’s been there before, it’s always been there, and we’re going to enhance it further as we move forward on implementing a junior kindergarten. There is a lot...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. This whole implementation of junior kindergarten has been positive news. As the Member alluded to earlier with his statement, there’s a lot of support on this particular piece of work that has been in the works for some time now, the last few years. We are mindful of the day homes, the operators in the Northwest Territories. We’re doing this for the whole Northwest Territories and the Member touched on two under two, there’s also three under three that we’re fully aware of and my department is working diligently with the operators, the day home operators and other operators...