Thank you, Minister Moses. Mr. Thompson.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank the Minister for those answers. He kind of answered some of the questions that I had on my paper here. I apologize if there is a letter that we may or may not have received. I am not saying you did not send it. It is just somewhere out there, and I have not seen it. I am not blaming anybody. I guess my big concern, and I hear this all the time, is with the Senior Home Heating Subsidy and the thresholds and that. I realize that the department is looking at that, but how can we talk to the people in the smaller communities when an individual has to work so he can feed his family, look after his child who is going off to school, and, in some of my small communities, that they do not have any employment for them so they can go off to school, so, the husband or the wife ends up looking after that? Have you guys looked at that as part of the threshold, as a concern, and have you come up with a plan to deal with this in the future? Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Minister Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, we are looking at the income thresholds on this. We do know that some of our seniors do use their allocated Senior Home Heating Subsidy before the end of the winter seasons. We have been encouraging to also go to income assistance to see whether or not that can offset of the costs. As I mentioned, with income assistance and clients and families that we work with, it is on a case-by-case basis. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister Moses. Mr. Thompson.
Thank you, and I thank the Minister for that answer. I guess the question is: it goes case-by-case, but does it also include the fact that there are other costs? Like if you have a family, the father has to provide food for the family, has to look after a sick spouse, and a child is going off to school. So are those factors built into this or not? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Minister Moses?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. There are certain criteria for families and seniors to access the Senior Home Heating Subsidy. They can also be accessing income assistance. Other factors, such as kids going off to school, no, we don't factor those in. We factor what is in the criteria for accessing Income Assistance and the Senior Home Heating Subsidy. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister Moses. Mr. Thompson.
Thank you, and I thank the Minister for that answer. I guess the concern I'm hearing, especially for some of the smaller communities, is, as I said, the expenses for this family are here, and they make too much money, but if they didn't do it, the kid can't go off to school, they can't provide food on the table, and that. So would the Minister be willing to get the department to look at this? At least look at it and see, as he talks about case-by-case situations, if they could look at that and give some discretion to their front-line workers in this area? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Minister Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do understand there are unique situations that our residents and our families are in. We also have a great Student Financial Assistance program, so if a student is going off to school, hopefully they're able to budget within their means, allowing the seniors at home to utilize their Senior Home Heating Subsidy, as well as utilize their income assistance, if they are on income assistance, for their most basic needs. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister Moses. Mr. Thompson.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I thank the Minister for that answer. I guess I'm going to have to try this a different way. I'm not arguing about your Student Financial Assistance program; it's probably the best in the world, and I'll give you that. I totally agree with you on that. The biggest challenge in the small communities is for students to access or get employment; we can't do it. In the smaller communities there is sometimes job-sharing with two people and they only work four hours a day and they work for two weeks and they get off a week. So that's where I'm coming across, is that families aren't just saying, "We can't budget properly." It's just that the realty is they make this X amount of money, they get student financial assistance, there's still a gap; and for the child to go off and go to school, which we should be encouraging, and the parents are trying to be supportive in that, they're still not able to achieve this. So I guess, again, I'm going to ask the Minister: will he just look at that, talk to the staff, and look at these situations to see if that is something that can be dealt with in the future? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Minister Moses, to the question.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. There are a lot of programs here that the Minister is referring to: Student Financial Assistance, Income Assistance, Senior Home Heating Subsidy. With the income, I'm not sure if it's something more specific, in terms of somebody that he's speaking to; but we're also doing investments, such as our career and education advisors who can work with students on things like budgeting programs, services. If they can't find a job in the community, depending on the age of the child, there's also an opportunity for that youth or young adult to look at accessing income assistance as well. If it is a youth who is living with the family, then that's taken into account when the income assistance application is being reviewed. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Moses. Mr. Thompson, are you satisfied?
Not really, Mr. Chair. Okay. I'm not talking about SFA; I'm talking about Senior Subsidy, the Senior Home Heating Subsidy Program. I'm talking about elders who have to look after their family. I'm talking about elders who, if they don't work, can't do that. The Minister talked about SFA, how great it is. Yes, when the student actually applies for it, yes, they do that, but it's still not helpful for the child to go there because, if he doesn't have a summer job, our SFA does not actually help as well as we want it to. So that was where my issue was, but I'm going to have to probably come from a different avenue on that.
So my next question, though, is: if we're changing the thresholds and stuff like that, we're going to see, probably, an increase in people able to use it, especially with allowing the rent subsidy, or people who rent. I think that's a great, really great thing, and I have to applaud the department for doing that, but do you see it as being an increase? Because we're going to see a whole bunch more people come to the door to get money for this, so are we looking at an increase for this, or is this something that you're going to look at this year and then see how it has an impact and potential increase for next year? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Minister Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We wanted to expand the opportunities for more seniors to be able to access the Senior Home Heating Subsidy. In the past, it wasn't fully utilized. Some seniors don't fully utilize their fuel subsidy, and that's why we're changing it to a monetary, so they get the full access to what they're entitled to. So some of our elders fully utilize it, some go over, some don't even use it. So, thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister Moses. Mr. Thompson, you have a few minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I thank the Minister for that answer. I think what I heard was that it wasn't fully utilized this way, so now we are actually implementing these new changes to fully utilize this budget line; and if that's correct, the Minister can just say "yes" and that would be my last question for the day on this item. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Minister Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, that's correct.
Thank you, Minister Moses. Any further questions? Seeing none, I will call on page 46, income security, operations expenditure, $50,801,000. Agreed?
Agreed.
Thank you. We shall move on to the next activity, starting on page 50, ending on information item, page 60. I will read out the summary here: labour development and standards, operation and expenditure summary, $50,389,000. Moving on. Questions, and could you please refer to which page your question is on. Starting with Mr. Thompson.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I did promise not to do anything in the other section. Now I'm back on this section, so I do have some questions in this area. I guess the first one to start with is, I tried to ask the question previously in another section, but this is where it is, it's about the Skills 4 Success Territorial Support Team, and we talk about this being a new initiative, and I applaud the department for doing something like this. So we're bringing six positions; three for the north, three for the south. Three in Inuvik and three in Yellowknife. However, I guess my first question is: why are we putting the three in Inuvik and three in Yellowknife? Then we'll go from there. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Minister Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We wanted to be reflective of the territories. We wanted three up in the North and three back in service Yellowknife and down in the southern part of the territories. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister Moses. Mr. Thompson.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I understand being reflective of the territory. I guess I'm a little bit concerned that Beau-Del and the Sahtu are getting three. Yellowknife, Deh Cho, South Slave are only getting three, as well. Yellowknife could actually probably have one or two strictly by themselves. Can the Minister or the department explain why we haven't looked at what is collectively good for the territories and put one in each region? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Minister Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is a new initiative, and I think we have three positions that can travel throughout the northern part of the territory and three in the south. We also have other resources such as our career officers, client service officers, employment transition officers who do similar work in the regions and in the communities, as well as guidance counsellors in the school. We have a lot of tools right now that will help all of our regions in the Northwest Territories to help youth and young adults get on whether it's a career path or an education path. Moving forward, these positions will help promote some of the work that we're already getting within education role, our Skills 4 Success and getting information out on our labour market needs report. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister Moses. Mr. Thompson.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank the Minister for that answer. However, guidance counsellors' positions in my riding, and in Mr. Nadli's riding, are being taken out and we're bringing in the child and youth mental health workers. So we're taking those positions out of the schools because those are the ones that I guess I'm seeing the Minister and Deputy Minister is saying it's not true. Could they please explain to me, then, if those positions still exist in the Deh Cho? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Minister Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. They're different positions. One, a guidance counsellor helps the students as well as helps in terms of helping the students get on a path to succeed as well as in post-secondary or a career. The positions that we were working within the Department of Health and Social Services are for mental health services. They're different positions; and the education authorities in terms of the guidance counsellors, what we fund them, they go out and get those positions for their respective schools. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister Moses. Mr. Thompson.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can the Minister confirm that we have guidance counsellors positions in Fort Providence, Fort Liard, and Fort Simpson presently? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Minister Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. What I'd have to do is I'd have to contact the Deh Cho Education Authority to confirm if those positions are there, because we give them funding for positions, but I'll go to my DM for a little more clarity. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Moses. Deputy Minister Haener.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. What is happening right now in schools across the Northwest Territories is a bit of a mixed approach in terms of how guidance counselling is done. In some of the larger schools, there are more dedicated resources to providing guidance counselling, career advice, scheduled planning to students, but by and large across the Northwest Territories in the medium to smaller schools it's actually a teacher who takes it on and does it as part of their teaching day. They're not full-time resources and they're not ear-marked necessarily as a guidance counsellor.
What we do have, as the Minister, indicated is, through these additional six resources, what we would be doing is not just having those positions available out there to supplement what is available by the way of counselling, but also creating additional resources and supports to send out to schools so that these individuals that do exist out there that are providing the services to students have more consistent and better, clearer resources to support students.
The other thing that I think the Minister referenced is that there is a difference between the guidance resources and the mental health or other counselling resources that exist in schools. We're not by rolling out these six positions, depleting or reducing the supports that exist in schools right now. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Deputy Minister Haener. Mr. Thompson.
Okay, I realize I've only got two minutes and 30 seconds here, so I'm going to try to ask the question: are these positions to develop resources or are they positions that are going out travelling to work out from the communities? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Minister Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. They're going to be both, really. They're going to be supporting our CDOs, getting out into the schools, into the communities to try to get our students in high school onto a right career path and support, have those extra supports. We do have some documents, the Skills 4 Success, labour market, needs assessment, and using those as part of the guiding tools that will help them do their jobs. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister Moses. Mr. Thompson.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess this still concerns me, that we're expecting three to support Yellowknife, Sahtu, and Deh Cho, which is probably about two thirds of the school population in that area, and then we have three in the North. It does concern me there, but I guess it comes down to the simple fact that we need these positions and in the regions. I still have not bought into these teams of three. We're going to have costs. We're going to have more costs to get from here to the South Slave, from here to the Deh Cho. You know, there's going to be cost to it; and the Tlicho; I forgot all about that, and I apologize. There are going to be costs to get these people out there. If we have them in the regions, it's closer to the clients and they're going to know the people there.
I support the concept of having these positions, but I do not support the fact that we're having three North and three South. Will the Minister look at this and come back to us on this? Thank you.
