Jane Groenewegen

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I can’t fully understand everything the Minister is telling us. I guess this is my final supplementary.

Are there educators teaching Junior Kindergarten in the 23 communities today who are not qualified to do so by way of an early childhood development specialized credential of some sort?

Thank you. When the Minister says that it would cost $2 million to $3 million to keep them on standby, that doesn’t seem like a very big price to pay for their usefulness. I mean, it has been what has served the Northwest Territories all these years. That doesn’t seem to be a very big price to pay in light of the almost estimated $60 million that it cost to fight fire this year, which was an extraordinary year, no doubt, but $2 million or $3 million to have this capacity and this ability at our disposal doesn’t seem like that much in view of the recent fire season.

So, if we’re not going to...

Mr. Speaker, I was under the impression that there was already a survey that existed. So if the survey does not exist yet, I would like a comprehensive list of who is going to be surveyed and what the survey questions are going to be, because it’s all about the questions you ask in terms of the information that you get back in.

I would suggest that not only parents of Junior Kindergarten-aged children should be surveyed, I think we should survey other parents in the education system, because when we met with our DEA in Hay River, we saw them struggling over what they would cut out of the...

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Anything further, Mr. Bouchard? General comments. Next I have Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s interesting that the department and the Minister are not hearing what the concerns are because we, as MLAs, are certainly hearing them and the responses that we are getting are completely understandable. We hear from people. I know this is supposed to be a short supplementary – I could stand here all day on this topic – so let me just go and ask the Minister a final question.

How much analysis went into the cost of adding Junior Kindergarten to existing schools on a community-by-community basis? Because when we, as the Standing Committee on Social Programs, heard...

Thank you, Deputy Minister Campbell. General comments. Anything further, Mr. Bouchard?

The Minister refers to very, very broad initiatives like the Aboriginal Achievement Initiative. These are laudable and good goals to have, Aboriginal achievement, but when it gets down to the details about how we achieve that, there has to be more analysis than talking to people and consulting people at a regional level. We need to know what is on the ground; we need to identify what is already going on in every community. Every community is different, every community has a different level of resources already being dedicated to early childhood development. So it needs to be on a community-by...

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister Miltenberger.

I would like to refute the Minister’s assertion that this is beneficial to all communities. I just listed that when you take the four-year-olds out of all these other programs that are existing and have existed for many years with very good success, you can’t do it in the name of… and not all parents can afford early childhood development. There is no fee for service. There’s parents’ cooperative. There’s volunteerism that goes into the Hay River Cooperative Playschool. Parents are involved. That’s a good thing. The Treehouse, the parents are involved. The Growing Together, the parents come...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment today. With all due respect to the Minister and the good intentions of the Department of Education, Culture and Employment with respect to Junior Kindergarten as a response to the need for more emphasis on early childhood development, I believe that the rollout and the planning and the way that this is being implemented is not right. There are so many downfalls. There are so many negative repercussions in the larger centres where we already have a very good focus on early childhood development.

I am...