Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Wise Women Awards is a very important event. It recognizes the contributions that women have made in society. We did talk about it. I met with Violet Camsell-Blondin, actually, on January 15th to talk about many things. That was one of them.

We had talked about different things. They were talking about maybe changing the time to coincide with October, with Women's History Month. That is probably why you haven't seen anything in the paper now. My women's special advisor has been working with them to look at alternative fundings. We have applied to a few of the mines...

We tried to look at it more in a fairness and equitable manner, because I couldn't really justify how the funding was provided beforehand. We used a market basket figure to look at how the communities are, so looking at similar costs between communities of the cost of living to define how we would do it.

In zone 1, a person who is making $56,000 or less is entitled to an annual amount of $2,700 a year. In zone 2, someone who is making $64,000 or less is entitled to $3,600 a year in fuel subsidy. In zone 3, which is our most isolated communities, someone making an annual income of $73,000 or...

I am trying to remember back if that was actually because, again, I was allocated this portfolio in April, and so I am trying to remember and I will have to get back to the Member on whether that was just before I took over or just after I took over, but it was fairly soon that it came up. I do know that they work closely with the Seniors' Society. I don't know who the other stakeholders were, but I will find out that. Again, stating that we are doing a full review of this program in the summer after this one year is finished.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will have to get back to the MLA on that and actually get the actual facts on that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

One of the first things, of course, that that person will have to do is get used to what he is walking into, or she is walking into. They will have to look at taking over the overall supervision, the operations of the normal day-to-day operations within all the campuses. Because we will be starting the vision exercise, they will be actually working with that close vision exercise, not only for the Northwest Territories, but taking that vision and then what we define as a vision of the Territories, they will be defining what the vision is for the polytechnic university. They will be taking our...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do want to take a moment to state that I do not see the MLA who just asked me the question as a coward. I see him as a very capable MLA, so I will start with that.

What have we done? What have we done so far? We put out the ad, and so again I will be releasing very soon where we are with the hiring practise. That will be coming up, by the latest, on Monday. I will be doing a Minister's statement on the polytechnic at that time. We have done visits, three visits to all three communities, and that was a lot. In fairness, when I went to the communities, there was a lot of...

I am a little bit shocked. I am wondering if the MLA has more information than I do, because I didn't know that we were having a new campus in Yellowknife at this time. We are still working with the City of Yellowknife to define if that is a brick and mortar or if it actually is building on what they have already. So those decisions have not been made, and my commitment has been to work very closely with the municipal government to determine that need. Like I said, the first couple of years are around planning, and the definition of what headquarters looks like or where it will be will be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, I think that the first thing to do, actually, was to hire the person to actually become the associate deputy minister, would be the first priority, and that is what we focused on. Actually defining where the headquarters are, we spent a lot of time, Mr. Speaker. I went to the three communities, Inuvik, Yellowknife, and Fort Smith, a total of three times. I met with the community counsellors there. I met with public meetings. I spent a lot of time, and I heard clearly, I heard clearly, that students and staff see the benefits of all three communities, and I see the...

Currently, it doesn't have a cost of living index included into it. This is just the start of the program. We have increased the threshold. We have increased the amount. We have looked at it on more of an equitable basis, so based on communities that have a similar cost of living.

Once this season is over, this summer, then we will be doing a review of it again to make sure, but I cannot stress enough. I take heed of the Member from Nahendeh stating that many seniors do not even reach this. I mean, $56,000 for the lowest zone is quite a bit of money, although you can struggle on it. So if you...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Education, Culture and Employment regularly reviews programs to make sure they are still meeting the needs of people; in this case, seniors in our communities. We recognize that there was a need to expand our program because we weren't subsidizing people who had rental accommodations; we were only subsidizing homeowners. In my personal opinion, oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes homeowners are often at a financial advantage to people who have to rent. Not always.

So we expanded it so that we could include renters, and we increased our income...