Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, earlier I spoke about the Senior Home Heating Subsidy. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Mr. Speaker, my first question for the Minister is the Senior Home Heating Subsidy guidelines were last updated in June 2016. What do the recent changes mean for the current and prospective clients? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There was just one change actually, and that was to clarify that seniors who maintain a residential land lease with the Department of Lands were eligible for the subsidy. What I want to maybe inform the Member is that we're actually going through a review, and we did get a lot of concerns from almost all the Members during our sitting earlier this year about the threshold levels, the amount of fuel that elders can receive. As the temperature drops below zero throughout the North, we want to make sure that this program is providing the best services to those in need, the seniors. We've actually got a working group right now that's reviewing this particular program. We're looking at income threshold levels, we're looking at the zones for communities, fuel allocations, and looking at ways to make it easier for seniors to access the program as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, my second question to the Minister is how many residents used the Senior Home Heating Subsidy in the last fiscal year?
We had 513 NWT seniors access the program last year. I believe 230 seniors used their full fuel allocation, not all the seniors use up what they're entitled to. As I said, we're reviewing the program so that those 230 seniors who've actually used up their fuel allocation might have some months where they need that fuel for the rest of the winter months. We're going to be looking at those threshold levels.
It's good to see that seniors are accessing the program. My third question for the Minister, Mr. Speaker, is how does the department advertise the program to make sure that everyone who might need it can access it?
Various ways, Mr. Speaker, radio ads, newspaper ads, we ask our MLAs to go out and promote it. Recently, we've been going out doing a lot of community meetings. We were just in Nahendeh. Every meeting that we went to we talked about the Senior Home Heating Subsidy. A lot of seniors that come to our open houses, we bring that up as well. We get our staff to promote as well in the communities so that seniors who are accessing the program, they can let other seniors know about what's available to them.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nunakput.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the answer from the Minister. The Minister was talking about thresholds, and my final question for the Minister, Mr. Speaker, is what is the current income threshold for seniors who qualify for the home heating subsidy program? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Currently, we have three zones throughout the Northwest Territories, to get the maximum threshold for each zone, for Zone 1 is just over $46,000; Zone 3 is high as $56,000, and those are in the more rural and remote communities and the communities in the high Arctic, and those are what we're looking at, whether or not we need to change those so that more seniors can access the program and have fuel and heat up their homes throughout the full winter months.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.
