Jackson Lafferty

When issues like this arise, my department, more specifically through client service officers, work with those clientele. We’ve been working with our clientele since the beginning of the month on a constant basis, trying to assist them in various ways either through a medical note and so forth. We provide funding to their needs according to the policies that have been highlighted, so it’s based on that, these individuals who qualify for eligibility for the standard rate for their community. Those are just some of the subsidies that we provide to those individuals that are in need of our...

Through the education renewal innovation we are going to look at the overall formula funding for our educational partners as well. We’ve been discussing this at the early stages back in 2007 until today, how we fund the school boards, how we fund the school programming, and based on the needs of the communities. This is an area that we’ve been told that we need to seriously look at formula funding to our school system. Currently it’s based on enrolment, and now we’ve been told why couldn’t it be based on base plus and go from there. Those are some of the areas we are contemplating with our...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. This ratio 16 to 1 has always been there. It’s part of our legislation. We’ve been working with that with the school boards throughout the years. At the same time, we’ve been providing an additional $11 million so it can be based at 13 to 1 on the average throughout the Northwest Territories. It is through the legislation that was passed through this House, so that’s what we continuously work with throughout the years.

Part of the process of why it was established as different and diverse programming that we have, the threshold in various regions in communities is to attract those individuals into small, isolated communities. Most students that are graduating are university, post-secondary, college. So we can attract those individuals to the remote communities where they are very challenged because of a lack of job opportunities.

There are a variety of ways of dealing with the remissible loan in other venues that we have, but that’s the very reason why we want to attract those individuals into the small...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. We recognize that there are challenges within our Northwest Territories, along with other jurisdictions, as well, but as the Member indicated in his Member’s statement, we have one of the best SFA programs throughout the country. We improve our programming every now and then, changing our existing policies and enhancing through the review. We just conducted a review of SFA and part of the recommendations brought to our attention was some of the challenges that we’re faced with. So those are the discussions that we need to have as we move forward.

As indicated earlier, I...

Mr. Speaker, earlier today the Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Employment and Social Development, and I signed a Labour Market Agreement for Persons with Disabilities. Under this agreement, the Government of Canada will provide up to $1.25 million in federal funding each year for four years to the Government of the Northwest Territories to improve employment prospects for Canadians with disabilities and better meet the needs of Canadian businesses. The Government of the Northwest Territories presently contributes over $2.7 million, part of which will be used to cost match the federal...

This Legislative Assembly controls the budget, and once it’s passed we start implementing per departmental initiatives. I understand where the Member is coming from. This particular subject will be brought to the attention of the board of governors so they can add it to their strategic planning within their college campuses, whether it be one campus, two campuses or all three campuses.

Two, I agree with the Member that we need to attract those students to our three campuses throughout the Northwest Territories. That is our overall goal, and I promise the Member that this will be addressed with...

There are times when we say client whether it be a couple, but I can get that information for the Member on the more specific if it’s dependents what that pertains to. I don’t have the exact information here before me, but I can provide that detailed breakdown for the Member on the definition of dependents and others that he questioned earlier.

Section 5.1 that the Member is alluding to does cover the rent or mortgage and others that are necessary, and now to cover the cost of their rent may be provided on behalf of a single client. For a single disabled client, up to a maximum of $900 is available to those individuals. Again, clients with dependents are eligible for a maximum of… There’s another cost factor to that too. These are just some of the subsidies that are available through Section 5.1 that the Member is referring to, and it does cover the rent, the mortgage that has been highlighted in circumstances as what we are...

We have to deal with the overall GNWT funding that’s been allocated to the school boards. With that, obviously, there is a surplus of over $8 million. Somehow we need to think outside the box and strategically how to best invest into our educational system. It is GNWT funding overall, and as we go through the business planning process, this means that as we go through, we’ve identified several areas of interest investment such as we did with the wage top-up. Over $511 million that we’re going to move forward with the new money once the budget’s approved here. Every year we go through this, and...