Caitlin Cleveland

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to move on to the infrastructure fund. And given that the goal of ECE is to increase spaces by 300 children in the life of the federal agreement, I'm wondering why we're not seeing an increase to this fund given that especially what we're seeing from lessons learned from Quebec was an urge to increase capacity upfront. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, we're in a bit of an interesting jurisdiction where we are also very reliant not only on notforprofit day cares, but we have a lot of day homes. When my kids went to child care during the day, all three of them went to day home providers, which was wonderful. I still have relationships with those people and adore them. My kids spent more time with those people than they did with me. And so I'm wondering how does it work within the territory as far as these wage topups? Is it provided to both day cares and day home providers, and how does that division...

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. No, that's helpful information. I'm also just looking at the total raise in funds for the early learning and child care program budget. And I'm wondering what portion of this will go to dollars needed for the increase in the wage grid that is expected to come in the next year? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I'm very happy to hear from the Minister that they're looking at new ways of doing this. One of the things that I find very frustrating is when you hear year after year after year there's a vacancy, we're waiting for someone to fill the vacancy. How long do you wait for someone to fill a vacancy before you start looking at new ways to do stuff? And so I'm really looking forward to this review. I think it's really important. I think a lot of kids depend on the services that they're just not getting right now.

I'm wondering if the Minister can tell...

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I also want to confirm that these policies will enable tenants to be able to adjust their rent. A lot of places in the territory, including in small communities, use seasonal work that might be part of this homebased business, and I want to make sure that people can adjust their rent even through a homebased business so that their income or sorry, their rent is properly reflective of their income as they move throughout the year and throughout the seasons. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And thank you for that clarification from the Minister. I just don't want to leave the 20th Assembly without dollars to do the work that needs to be done for that one.

I'm wondering if the Minister can speak to why there's been a decline in the education operations and educator development fund? It looks like there is about a $200,000 decrease there.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the mandate called for policies to allow for homebased businesses as of summer of 2022. It also called for the enabling of public housing to have licensed child care programs in it in the fall of 2022 or sorry, 2020 as well. So given that these timelines have very clearly changed now that we're two and a half years later, when can this side of the House expect to see this kind of a framework and policy change? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I'm wondering why we wouldn't maintain a consistent value or dollar value in this pocket so that ECE, especially, you know, given what we just heard from MLA Martselos in regards to the importance of education, why we wouldn't, rather than having a tenyear strategy innovation, just be constantly innovating in the way that we are delivering education in the Northwest Territories. And so I'm wondering why that's not a fixed amount that is constantly there for us to continue to do better. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Entrepreneurship accelerates economic growth, spurs innovation, instigates social change, promotes research and development, and improves and grows existing sectors. Global business owners have been instrumental in spurring social change and improving the way people live and work around the world.

Mr. Speaker, entrepreneurship is a good thing for every NWT community. While some business ventures are large operations, so many more are small homebased businesses expanding our workforce and economic and social health. But Housing NWT is standing in the way.

People in public...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll wait until the next section.