Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Today I talked about unofficial home care services provided by adult children and grandchildren who live with elders. In many of the small communities it’s quite common for elders to have their adult children and grandchildren living with them. The government needs to recognize and acknowledge and do all it can to support this important community situation.
I have questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Will the Minister agree to review the current seniors fuel subsidy program and policy so that it properly takes into account the services provided by live-in family caregivers?
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. This particular area has seen some changes over time. We’ve increased the income threshold as well, household income, by $10,000. At the same time, through the transition period we’ve made some changes along the way with other programs as well. So we are receptive to making changes to our programming, overall programs that we have that are deliverable to the communities. This seniors home fuel subsidy is a very attractive subsidy program for seniors in the small communities especially. I would state in the House that this is an area we continue to look at with individuals who are looking after their grandma or grandparents or parents. We are fully aware of it, but as it stands, it’s based on the household income. We are looking further into it on how we can have some less impact on the seniors themselves.
I thank the Minister for that response. Without changing the income requirements for the program, will the Minister direct his staff to revise the policy so that these adult children and grandchildren who live with elders can have all or some of their income exempt depending on how the department chooses to look at it? Some or all of their income exempt in lieu of the important elders’ care that these children are providing.
Those are the areas that we are currently evaluating. We need to assess who those seniors are, how many individuals are living with them, and they are based on household income.
As I stated in the House on several occasions, some of those individuals are working at the mines. Some of those individuals take advantage of the system. We have to be very careful in the evaluation system. As long as it benefits the clientele, the seniors, we’ll do what we can to meet those needs of those individuals. We are looking into this even further within my department.
Will the Minister commit to further working with the Minister responsible for Seniors with the specific mandate of looking at revising all of the seniors support programs?
We work as a cross-cultural departmental initiative where NWT Housing Corporation uses household income. The same for the Minister responsible for Seniors through her programming. Within the ECE subsidy programs it is based on household income. Those are the areas that we continue to improve our programming. Yes, I will continue to work with my two colleagues on this particular item.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In that future work will the Minister agree to look at the seniors support programs holistically with the other Ministers and do what is feasible for the seniors and for the government and essentially all the residents of the NWT?
I was having a chat on the side with my colleague here. Definitely we are committed and I believe it was brought up some time ago that we need to look at the household income. We are committed to looking even further at expanding the role of the subsidy programs we deliver based on household income. So the Housing Corporation is also. We will look into this further.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
