Jackson Lafferty

I agree with the Member, we’re possibly utilizing community members. We know that some of the community members have worked in the education field or early childhood for 20-plus years. They may not have a degree or diploma, but they have all this experience under their belt. How can we best utilize them in a classroom setting? If we can have some sort of mentorship program working with the teachers, professional teachers. I’ve stated that there’s going to be some training and those individuals that have been identified in the Member’s riding, through the school boards we’ll be able to identify...

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. We do have the detailed information. We can certainly provide that to Members. Mahsi.

Mr. Chairman, that particular question will have to depend on us working closely with the school boards. The infrastructure, the space availability within a school, so we would have to work out those logistics and as the Member indicated, we are in February, and September, so we do have some time to work with them as well. We have done our research and we have done analysis of the spaces that are available to us, and we have that information before us. Some of the information that Members… I totally agree with the Member that we need qualified professionals to deal with our children in the...

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. As you’re aware, we were going through the Early Childhood Development Framework. The action plan has been developed, and part of the action plan, obviously, will capture the junior kindergarten. I understand where the Member is coming from. Where would it be situated, because we are currently using the PTR as part of the school contribution, so there’s ECD Action Plan, part of the recommendations brought to our attention, so junior kindergarten would capture that. At the same time, we are having this school contribution as part of PTR to offset the costs of introducing...

When it comes to making decisions based on the clientele’s needs, we have to follow the policies, regulations and also the legislation that has been passed in this House. At the end of the day, the decision lies within my department. I’m the overall person in charge of authority of income support. The client service officers work in the communities with the clientele and work with the directors. It goes under my shop as well. We have to keep in mind that there are regulations, legislation that we have to follow, to meet the needs of individuals in the communities. Mahsi.

Mr. Chair, the Member talked about those individual children with special needs. Obviously, we are currently reviewing inclusive schooling. That’s a particular program to focus on those individuals with special needs. We’ll do what we can through the review process to capture those individuals even more, strengthening the programming itself. That is currently under review.

Also, the Member talked about the community delivering age four programming and other programming. We are currently introducing junior kindergarten for four-year-olds. This is an area that we feel that it could be utilized in...

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...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. [Translation] I have an important thing to say. I know that there are a lot of things happening in our region. In the last little while in my region, in Whati there were hand games that were held in the community, and I want to express, to the community, a thank you and congratulations.

We had visitors from Alberta and all the people from the Northwest Territories. This was put on by the Whati community. The chief and council have prepared and hosted the hand games for all the people. They also had security for the community. I want to express my thanks and congratulations...