Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm not sure that I really understand what the Member is looking for and maybe I could ask him to restate it, if that would be acceptable.

Mr. Speaker, that's a hypothetical question that I'm having trouble answering. I'm not sure if it would have helped. It's clearly a regrettable situation that happened, but I’m not sure whether or not a sex offender registry in the Northwest Territories would have helped to identify this person. In this situation, the question as to whether or not to identify this person would have been made, I think, by the parole system as to whether or not he was qualified to be released. The situation was that under the terms and conditions of his release order, there was no specific order about how he...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I suspect that there is overall equity right now, if you take into account the amount of subsidy that is paid to support the apprentices through their work throughout the year. This government contributes a significant amount of money to providing salaries to the apprentices while they're working. One of the advantages you have in the apprenticeship program is that generally you get through that program without thousands and thousands of dollars of student debt, which is unlike post-secondary programs for university students. Right now somebody can come...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Northwest Territories program provides a wage subsidy for employers to take apprenticeships on, so that a significant portion of a first-year apprentice's salary is, in fact, paid by the Government of the Northwest Territories, through the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, in order to facilitate the young people getting into the trades. The government also provides funding for the school training that is required to be taken by all apprentices, so there is support for the books and that sort of training. I think that what we're...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d be happy to provide that to the Member. I’m not sure if she wants me to provide that in writing so that she’s got it in a lot of detail. As I’ve said earlier, one of the first steps is to try and respond to the RCMP business plan to make sure we have adequate policing here in the Northwest Territories. We are supporting community programs like the Wellness Coalition and the Citizens on Patrol program, which again should help to reduce the opportunities for this sort of offence to ever take place. Under the Youth Criminal Justice Act there is a new sentence that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The RCMP can do that and have done that in the past, but it is entirely the RCMP's decision as to when they should make that sort of announcement.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would think that in the best of all worlds the wait would be considerably less than three to six months. It would be better if it could be only a couple of weeks, but the fact is that we can't find enough lawyers in the Northwest Territories to practice family law who are willing to take on these cases. The rate of pay for the Northwest Territories for legal aid lawyers is the second highest in Canada; only Nunavut is higher. But there are very few lawyers who are interested in taking on family law cases, and because of that there has been a growing...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yes, in fact we could probably collect that kind of data, as long as it was for the department as a whole. The problem is that if we released it for one single unit in the department, like YCC, it would make the figures too small so that employees could likely be identified. I can tell you that we could collect that kind of data for the department and offer comparison data to other departments in the Northwest Territories for the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to recognize my constituent, Ms. Karen Hamre, as well as another Karen, Major Karen Hoeft, in the gallery today.

---Applause

Enjoy your glass of water now. Income support is offered as a program of last resort, it's not a guaranteed income. It is a program that I'm prepared to discuss its administration with the committee and discuss how it should be examined and reviewed, and then we can maybe move from there. But in its current format, it is a program of last resort, and all of your resources, all of an individual's resources that they have, whether that comes from legal winnings or a cash gift, are counted as something in your pocket and all that is provided is then a top-up to get to what is absolutely needed...