Shane Thompson

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am going to go back to the $150 million. Can the Minister clarify: is it $150 million that they are giving the school boards, or is it $147 million? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today in my Member's statement, I was talking about income security. During my tours and talking to people, they are trying to understand it better, and I am not maybe doing the best job, so I guess what I am asking the Minister of ECE is: what factors are taken into calculating income support? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, colleagues. When digging further, I am informed the program has fixed food rates for each community and there is a cost-of-living factor in the IA food rates. Unfortunately, it does not factor in the cost of the person's time, travel or freight to get the food. I will hope that the government will look into this matter to help out these two small communities.

Mr. Speaker, I'll have questions for the Minister of ECE in regard to the matter later today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson, and I thank the Minister for his answer. I'm not worrying about the technical package. I understand the technical package. It's the messaging we're trying to get across, and I thank the Minister being willing to work with us and brief us as we move forward.

Do not get me wrong; I've seen the research, I've talked to the staff, I've talked to the teachers about the importance of this decision, whether it's collective bargaining. It could potentially, most likely will be, a very positive thing for our students, so I'm not worried about the negotiation part. I just want...

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I thank the Minister for that answer. I understand that, communication, sometimes strategies have to be different for different things. However, if we're going to sell something or be able to promote and inform the people, we as ordinary MLAs should be part of the package. So if you're willing to work with us and get the messaging out, it makes things a little bit easier.

So that's why I'm asking for this, is so we can work together, the 19 of us, so when we're getting out the message, we can get the message to the prime stakeholders, who are the parents. So it doesn't...

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I thank the Minister for his answer. Once they've come up with the process, is he willing to share with us, the Regular MLAs? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will try to just keep mine specific so we can get moving on this. I will try not to take the 10 minutes. I guess my first one is that I would have to agree with my colleague who just previously spoke about communication. This is probably the biggest challenge that we are facing out there, is the messaging and how we get that messaging to the general public, because there is a lot of miscommunication out there. I say we, collectively, are doing a bad job because we are not getting the information or asking for the proper information and getting it out there to the people...

I thank the Minister for his answer. However, with decentralization today and the modernization of computers we can do things, and right now we've seen positions out there that actually are pan-territorial. So will the Minister re-evaluate this decision and actually put a position, which makes sense in the South Slave, into Hay River?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Minister for his answer. It is still a little confusing here, though. We don't have a store in two of my communities, so the food basket is in, I would assume, Hay River or Fort Simpson, which, depending on the community and depending on the season, is either an hourandahalf ride to Fort Simpson or a fourandahalfhour ride to Hay River, which adds on to the costs of my residents. Will the Minister make a commitment to get his department to look into this unique situation for these two communities and come up with a subsidy that would help them move forward...

I thank the Minister for giving us that information. That is very helpful, and I will be able to utilize that in my office and when I go on tour. One question that does happen to me, in my riding, is: why does not the department factor in freight into these calculations, especially in my riding?