Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Is this the one with social assistance?

Community and family support services, the activity in one of the tasks and in there is social assistance. One of my concerns is that the food, clothing and shelter allowances are the basic needs of many people. I think it is too low. We have covered this already in other areas. I wanted to add to the discussion that went on in the past in this session, about social assistance and the food allowance, et cetera. I think it is low. There is a need to review it and possibly increase it after the review because there is definitely a need to increase that. I wanted to say that for the record. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Agreed.

---Agreed

Agreed.

---Agreed

Agreed.

---Agreed

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to make a couple of comments on contributions to family counselling and family violence prevention services. I would initially like to state that on the weekend I visited the safe shelter in Inuvik. They have opened their doors for business and are now serving clientele in the Delta. I would like to thank the department and the Ministers who were in that department in the past year, in getting money for this needed shelter and program. Again, the people who are working in there are presently in various stages of training, development and trying to get the program under way. I would like to express my appreciation to the people who started this project years ago and finally have something which is visible and operational.

In terms of money and availability of money, in developing new projects mistakes are made and in the development of budgets items are forgotten. In the case of the shelter in Inuvik, various items have been missed and there has been no consideration by the department to adjust the funding. I wanted to raise that issue because it could cause some concern at later stages if they run out of money.

It is the same for the family counselling centre, family violence program in Inuvik. They have found, over the past year, that the amount of counselling which they have to do, the client load has doubled from last year to this year. The amount of funding they have is the same. They received $200,000 and this year they have requested $278,000 for 1993-94, but they have only been allocated the same amount as what they received last year ever though the work load has doubled. The numbers are staggering in terms of the client loads they have. They currently have long waiting lists of people who they cannot see because they do not have enough counsellors.

Another thing which is happening is that the Department of Health does not contribute any money to this program, but when clients come to them they are often referred to the family counselling centre. Many of these are emergency type clients, so any time you have an emergency and you take a counsellor away, that creates more backlog. What the mental health association would like is a fair consideration of the work they are doing and of their budget requirements. I would just like to raise that, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Agreed.

---Agreed

Agreed.

---Agreed

Agreed.

---Agreed

Agreed.

---Agreed

Agreed.

---Agreed