Julie Green

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So Mr. Chair, are we as a government actively looking for nominees for this program or are we just accepting applications as they come in? Thank you.

Rather than cutting the program, what does the Minister think he could do to help the college remove barriers to completing the social work program and improve graduation rates?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, at the time that the department presented its business plan it was not able to tell us about the projected growth in income assistance for the coming fiscal year. I am wondering if they are able to do that now, please. Thank you. That is, growth in the number of clients. Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Justice. As I just mentioned, the rate of sexual assault complaints that are dismissed by police as unfounded is almost twice the rate in the NWT as it is nationally. The Yukon Government has mounted a robust response to the rates of unfounded sexual assault complaints, including training police and court workers in updated interview techniques, recruiting more women officers, funding specialized police work and victim services, and ensuring JP's are regularly retrained on emergency protection orders. What kind of response...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. On Tuesday, I related the experience of a Yellowknife woman who came to me with her story of physical and sexual assault, followed by intimidation from her accused attacker, and all met with a lackluster response from the police.

The Globe and Mail newspaper recently published a report that reveals just how often women are mistreated by the justice system. Over 20 months, investigative journalists analyzed policing data from every province and territory. They discovered that across Canada police dismiss roughly one in five reported sexual assault complaints as unfounded...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I am not aware that there was ever a blitz, let alone a follow-up blitz. I think that the government could do a better job of communicating the information about instructional hours with parents, and I encourage them to take the earliest opportunity to do that. Thank you. Those are all my questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am sorry to belabour this point, but what I am talking about here is communicating the policy direction. The policy direction we are going to go despite lamenting low attendance and low achievement rates is to cut instructional hours, and here is why. That is the kind of detail that parents want. I think they appreciate that there is another level of decision-making at the school that will decide how to implement this policy direction, but they want to hear the policy direction from the department. They don't want to hear it from me, and they don't want to hear it from...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just in response to the deputy minister's last answer, there are some significant loose ends around instructional hours at this point, specifically whether there are enough hours for the high school courses to count toward the diploma and be equivalent to Alberta.

Given the fact that the department had months of lead time  I think the first MOU was signed in September  where is the problem here in trying to give the information to the primary stakeholder here, which is the parent? I mean, the students often are too young to be considered the primary stakeholders, although...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I like the trend in this question period where I am asked the question. Mr. Speaker, the question about the family violence attitude survey, it is $100,000. That is what it cost before, and it is a very important planning tool in order for the government to make the best use of the money they have in preventing family violence. I would like to think that it is not an either/or. I would like to think that, where the Minister is careful to do planning in other parts of his portfolio, that he would also consider this to be an important planning tool.

I recognize that money is...

Thank you to the Minister for what sounds like a promising approach. I note that What Will It Take is really about empowering bystanders to intervene in family violence situations. I think that that is another downstream problem. The upstream problem is consent. I think that that is the approach that needs to be taken now, is to ensure that people understand what consent is. I am wondering if the Minister has any plans to pursue that line of thought?