Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, am going to stand and vote in favour of this motion. As stated by my colleagues, it’s quite straightforward. This is asking for an updating of an act which is very much out of date. It’s asking for changes that will allow us to provide better services to our residents. It will allow us as residents to feel a bit more involved to allow us to do sort of the social service aspect of our lives, if we wish to do it, which we certainly can’t do now.

The whereases in the motion talk about specific areas in the current act which are out of date and which need to be...

Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Minister. I guess I would like to suggest that if we are following a system that we have set up that perhaps is not working very well, then maybe we ought to look at other jurisdictions in a little more detail and perhaps change our system.

In our system, in our process and in these guidelines that staff has, does it identify a standard turnaround time and what that time is from the time the application comes in to when the renewed or new card goes back out to the individual? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Minister for the answer. I would like to know then, if it is a manual process and I’m a worker in Inuvik and I’m processing these applications, do I have a template? Do I have standards, guidelines that I follow so that Mr. Moses sitting next to me is actually doing the same work in the same way that I am doing? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. Best use of money. I like that phrase. I hope that it proves out to be true. It’s not always true, I think, in government, unfortunately.

To the issue of the symposium, you mentioned in the fall. Is this going to be early in the fall or later in the fall? How long do people have? It’s over the summer, so how long do stakeholders have to get their action plans together?

Mr. Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the Department of Education, Culture and Employment report its Income Assistance client survey results annually as a performance measure in the departmental business plan. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for the response. I can appreciate that. I understand that the government is going to be working on an action plan. I think he referenced that he’s going to encourage other stakeholders to develop action plans as well. From my recollection – I’m testing my memory here – I think there’s up to 29 different groups who have had a hand in, at some point in time or another, in terms of the Anti-Poverty Strategy with input.

So these various organizations all deal with people who are involved in a situation of poverty, assisting them and so on. These groups, as well, are not...

Mr. Chair, I move that this committee recommends that as the Department of Education, Culture and Employment introduces its revised Child Care User Subsidy within the Income Assistance program, it should develop clear guidelines that are consistent with program requirements and clearly communicate these requirements to front-line staff and potential applicants. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to acknowledge Frame Lake constituent Mr. Ian Legaree, director of sport, recreation and youth with our Department of Municipal and Community Affairs. Ian, yesterday, received the Dave Ramsden Career Excellence Award. This is the most prestigious of the awards presented at the annual Premier’s Awards ceremony and it recognizes the outstanding achievements of an individual with 20 or more years of experience in the GNWT public service. Congratulations, Ian. Well deserved.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to make some general comments on all of these motions. I think it’s important that we state how much effort the committee put into the consideration of this report. There was a great deal of detail that the Auditor General presented to committee in the report and committee considered it at length and quite carefully. I think the number of motions that have come out of this report are an indication of the concern that committee had for the findings in the Auditor General’s report.

I realize the late hour. I would speak to some other motions, but I think I will...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Auditor General’s report was tabled in the Legislative Assembly on March 7, 2013. This year’s performance audit focused on four income security programs delivered by the Northwest Territories Department of Education, Culture and Employment (ECE): Income Assistance, Student Financial Assistance, the Child Care User Subsidy, and the Senior Home Heating Subsidy.

All of these programs are directly related to the 17th Assembly’s goal of “healthy, educated people free from poverty.”

In the past, northern indigenous peoples survived by following traditional laws of sharing...