Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Now that I have just about said everything that I was going to say in the Minister’s statement, I doubt that I will bother to say one. Members will see in the response to the petition that will be tabled tomorrow, there is encouragement for landlords and tenants to submit their comments to this government on rent control. We are interested in hearing the comments from the public on both sides and then we will assess where we go, once we have had the opportunity for that input. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have changed the supervisor. We changed the office manager in the last six months. So there hasn’t been the actual review done that we had talked about doing. We thought it would be better to let things settle out and let the new management have a chance to have some advice and input in the process. So we should be taking a look at that operation fairly soon and should have some response we can give Members in the not-too-distant future. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We tried to encourage the people who had signed up for the Social Work Program this year to consider going to the Yukon College and taking the course there. We actually had somebody go and talk to the prospective students and encourage them. We only had an uptake of a couple, I think, that actually went. We are, again this year, going to work with Health and Social Services to try and put a renewed emphasis on recruiting people to enrol in the program. So we haven’t given up on it, but we couldn’t proceed with the course with that level of uptake. We will continue to...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I suspect that the Member is referring to the seasonal clothing allowance, which is a bigger chunk of money on an occasional basis to reflect the need for warmer clothing, for instance, to get through the winter. That is only given out at certain times during the year, and typically only to people who have been on income support for a period of time. As I said in an earlier response, people tend to cycle on and off the system. So if they come in just needing support for a month, the expectation isn't that right off the bat they're going to get that funding right...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe I was going to do a Minister's statement on this issue on Monday, but the answer is we will be launching the consultation process very soon, with advertisements in the newspapers and we will have a web site available for people. As well, we will go out and do focus group consultations and there will also be some direct mail-out, to people that we know are stakeholders, to solicit their input. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The fire marshal has issued an order that will see the building closed fairly soon, within the next year. So the Member is right; we have to look at new space. There is going to be a meeting on Monday with Public Works and territorial ECE staff to take a look at planning the consultation process to figure out what to do. The issue that we are going to have is going to be that there are some non-government agencies in that space now that wouldn’t normally be in government space and that we can’t plan to provide government space for in the future. So that is going to...

Thank you. First, Madam Chair, yes, we will get the information Mr. Ramsay has requested that I couldn’t give today. In terms of the graduation rate, I can’t disagree that we need a better graduation rate. I can’t disagree that the Member early on in his comments, talked about how the changes in the mid-90s to the funding for schools has impacted on courses like industrial arts. There’s no question that’s absolutely true. We have, over the past few years, put money back into funding the schools, but back in the early to mid-90s the pupil/teacher ratio in the Territories was, I believe, just...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We raised the rates in 2004. There is a survey done every two years, in conjunction with the Audit Bureau, and we typically try to raise the rates or change the rates as they need to reflect the cost of living in different communities.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman, we don’t have with us the detail for the year 2003-04, so I can’t answer right now the Member’s question. I can promise that we will get the information for the Member by tomorrow, but I can’t tell him right now.

Madam Chair, I don’t have a clue. Sorry. I can’t answer that question. I can try to get the information for the Member, but it’s not a statistic that we would keep.