It’s safe to say we know who the GNWT is pulling for this federal election.
Following the May 13 announcement Ottawa was going to implement $10 per day universal child care, provincial and territorial governments were tasked with negotiating funding agreements. Now that a federal election is called, any provinces or territories that haven’t inked a deal will need to wait until the next set of Parliamentarians are sworn in and hope those on the government side of the House have the same intentions.
We’ve previously argued any federal election should be held off until agreements were in place, noting that $10 per day daycare has been nearly passed and killed three times before, first by Brian Mulroney in the late 1980s, then by Jean Chretien in the ‘90s and then Paul Martin around the turn of the century.
But the fact the GNWT doesn’t have any control over when an election is called is no excuse. Pundits across the land were predicting a fall election before the new Governor General was appointed. It’s been a regular topic of every major newspaper and broadcast in Canada. The only way you could not have seen this election coming is if you weren’t paying attention.
So why then, is a government that specifically listed “advance universal child care by increasing availability and affordability” as one of its 22 priorities for this term sitting with empty hands while our neighbours in the Yukon — who have only been sitting as a government since April — have managed to ink a funding agreement? Surely the GNWT could have finalized a deal with a Liberal MP already showering the North with funding announcements in their inner circle. What’s the hold up?
When we spoke to Education Minister R.J. Simpson, he said it was because of the NWT’s unique circumstances — crumbling infrastructure, the high cost of getting qualified staff up here to work and no training programs for NWT residents to enter the field themselves. These on their own are valid points to argue for — except the next day the GNWT and Ottawa announced an extension of the existing funding agreement which specifically addresses those three concerns.
When pushed, Simpson said the GNWT was going to prepare for the next round of negotiations following the Sept. 20 election — which strongly suggests the GNWT’s strategy is based on the current assumption of pundits, pollsters and incumbent politicians that Justin Trudeau and the Liberals have this election in the bag.
This gamble puts us Northerners in an incredibly awkward position and leaves the NWT as one of only five jurisdictions not accepting the money, the others being Nunavut, New Brunswick, Ontario and Alberta. We risk being left to sit at the negotiating table alone, or worse, just left behind.
As stated above, we’ve been here three times before in the last half-century. If power changes hands in September, our children will pay the price of the GNWT’s risky bet.