Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is directed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment and it’s in regards to the lack of income support services in communities, especially communities such as Tsiigehtchic where you don’t have an income support worker in the community and you have to depend on people to come in from either Fort McPherson or Inuvik. They usually come in once a month and in most cases it’s at the end of the month, and it’s causing some problems not only for the local housing authority but for the residents of Tsiigehtchic. What we’re finding is they’re one month behind and they run into arrears. The Housing Corporation isn’t being paid on time. More importantly, if you’re not in the community for that one-day visit, you miss out, so you basically have to wait until the next month to be provided with that service of income support.
The other issue is there’s no consistency with regards to the people who come into the community. Every time an income support worker comes to the community it’s a different person, so you have to explain yourself all over again on exactly how many people who live with you, how much money you make, how many kids you have and how many cats you feed. I think it’s that type of information that people are getting tired of. So I’d just like to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, what is this government doing to ensure that communities have people based in their communities providing these type of services rather than having to depend on outsiders to come in and provide a service for them? Perhaps through a service agreement with the band operations or privatize it so somebody locally can provide that service, rather than having this system which basically is having an effect on the service in the communities. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. To deal with the clientele of income support service, we do have client service officers in the communities; maybe not all communities, but those communities without client service officers we do have on-duty individuals that travel from the region. As the Member indicated, there are client service officers that travel to the communities and those individuals should be familiar with the files. There might be a case where...because usually it’s a regular client, clientele, and those are the services that we provide to the communities. Every time we do an assessment in the income support service area, there’s always improvement in the working relations with the communities, and we’ll continue to do that. But certainly we have client service officers that are responsible for all the clientele that we have. Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, that’s why I opened up with the lack of income support services, because there is no service. How can you have service when you have somebody come to a community for four hours a month? That’s not service. I think it’s important that this government puts the money into providing that service. There was over a million dollars given to the Department of Education when they transferred that responsibility from the Housing Corporation, and the whole idea was because we have local housing authority officers in the community. We won’t allow them to do the job of accessing people. Why couldn’t you work with the local housing authority and give them that responsibility to provide the housing component of income support to do the assessment at the local community level and do a pilot project in communities that don’t have income support workers, such as the community of Tsiigehtchic?
Mr. Speaker, we do provide services to the communities. If we have an income support worker, client service officer in a community, they provide the service. If they’re not there, that means we don’t provide services. So we do provide services in all communities, Mr. Speaker. Client services officers are established in the communities. If they’re not established in the community, they travel to the communities. There is a regular scheduled visit by income security officers, client service officers. So certainly those are the areas that we continue to improve on.
There’s also a review on the way, Mr. Speaker, that we will get some response by the end of this month or early next month, and that goes to show how our program is doing overall. So definitely we’ll be looking forward to that and we’ll be discussing further on that. Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, this time I’ll be pleading with the Minister, can he seriously consider doing pilot projects in communities to improve the services to the residents of those communities who are only receiving four hours a month of services, and offer those dollars, instead of having people fly in and fly out, show up, say hello, good bye, fill out a piece of paper and leave, have those dollars stay in the community, provide an opportunity for people by way of employment, but, more importantly, have the service delivered by the community by way of community empowerment? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I think that is one of our goals, whether it be a pilot project or we’ve increased some client service officers in the small communities just over the last couple of years. So we continue to improve our programs. Based on a pilot project, most likely we can look at that and see where we can go with it. If it’s required, then it has to go through the business planning process again. But definitely those are the areas that we can certainly look at in the Member’s riding and in other ridings as well. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, again I’d like to ask the Minister, I know my colleague from Nunakput is very frustrated in regards to people getting evicted. Now, a lot of evictions have to do with arrears, yes, but a lot of those arrears are occurring because people are not getting the attention they should be by way of these service client providers, because the consistency with their visits or with the consistency of time they spend in the community is not there. It’s an inconsistent process. So what is this government going to do to improve the services to our communities and give us more hours or more days a month than what’s presently being provided?
Mr. Speaker, the eviction process deals with a lot of issues. With arrears there’s a lot of attachment to it and, sure, it’s not the only one area but that’s the area that we are focussing on with the two departments, our department and also the NWT Housing Corporation, how we can improve in those communication dialogues we have, whether it be the LHO or client service officers at the community level. Yes, we hear there’s a lack of communication happening from one community to another community. Those are areas that we continuously improve in those areas. So, Mr. Speaker, we’ll continue to monitor the program and, like I said, there’s a review that’s coming at the end of this month or early next month and that will go to show how our program overall is doing. And if we need to make some changes, we’ll be discussing that with the standing committee. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
