Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It does not matter whether they are accepted or not, but, yes, it is people who stop in and fill out an application.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When you say it takes a person ten minutes to fill out an application, realistically, you are not talking about the people that are refused or the people that have gone there to fill out a form to say exactly what their goals are. This is just the application itself. I think that is the problem that we have in the communities for the income support workers. In a lot of the smaller communities, you are dealing with more than just filling out applications. You are doing assessments of the individuals. I was not aware until the last couple of weeks that there is an appeal process in place where, if I was not aware of it, there are probably a lot of other people in the communities who do not know that this process exists also. What happens in that case where they are asked to help fill out an appeal application? Do they get paid for that too or does that not count in the scenario of the visit?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are typically very few appeals, so there is not an awful lot of time spent on those. The Member quoted my number of ten-minutes and I want to remind the House that I just picked that figure for an example. I am not sure that the formula bears any relation to that ten-minutes. I do not want people to become confused by that, but the formula is based on the amount of time that it took an income support worker to deliver the program on average over the course of a year. We have considerable experience in assessing whether or not that number works.

The income support worker is not funded to counsel people. The Income Support Program came to the Department of Education, Culture and Employment and away from the Department of Health and Social Services because it was expected that this would provide more time for the social workers to do counselling. So, if people need counselling, the income support worker is intended to refer them somewhere else.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do not think they are there for counselling too, but I believe that the role that they play is to help people, assess them to see exactly what educational backgrounds they have, exactly what type of skills they have so that they can develop themselves to become independent and eventually they will not have to depend on income support. I thought that was the whole initiative of this program.

I think that myself growing up in a small community is where a lot of the larger centres take a lot of things for granted because they do not realize the efforts and the human resource people who we have in the communities are limited on the amount of time they usually have a handful of people who are responsible for doing everything. I think that for him to make the motion they are not there as counsellors, I do not think that is what I said and I did not make the statement. I would like to ask the Minister is part of their job description is to assist people filling out forms and to do the evaluation of those individuals?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the first aspect of the job is to assess the form that is filled out by the income support applicant to determine whether or not they qualify for support. Then there is an expectation that they will assist the applicant by referring them to other resources in the community if they need assistance to develop a career plan and so on. I think it is important to remember that, even in those situations where an income support recipient is payrolled, in other words their support comes automatically each month, that counts as a visit too. There are clients that the income support worker never has to see, or almost never has to see. Yet the funding is included for those positions as a visit as well. As I said, the formula was developed over the course of a year by checking how much time it took for income support workers, on average, to see clients. All of these things have been, over a period of time, worked into the formula. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can the Minister tell me if there is going to be another review or assessment in light of the concerns I have raised out of my riding where they feel that they have been unjustly treated in regard to the way the formula works, and expecting them to deliver a program for the amount of resources that they are getting, and I use Tsiigehtchic where they are getting $4,000 to run a program for a whole year? With the cost to run that program, it is not feasible. Can the Minister tell me if there is going to be a review in light of the concerns that are coming from my constituency on this particular matter?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the formula will be reviewed annually. We are prepared to talk to the community any time. As I said, we would hope that it would not happen, but if a community decides that it is not worth administering the program, then we would have to look for alternative delivery mechanisms. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, it comes down to this scenario, I do not know if growing up in a large centre or not living in a small community is not setting in because it does cost a lot more to live in small communities. It does take a lot more work to deal with people in the small communities because you are dealing with a different environment. In larger centres you have office structures and everything else in place. The whole concept of applications for them in a lot of the communities, it is a tough job just trying to attract the person without trying to explain to the elders and people in the communities, well, you have to fill out this form and you have to do this, which takes a lot more time than in larger centres. My question to the Minister is, why do I get the feeling that we are being penalized because of where we are located? It will be easier to change the program and the way the program is being allocated than coming up with a statement, well, they do not want it we will take it back and do it some other way. Why do you have a program which is a territorial program for all communities, but with the notion if that community does not like the way we are delivering it we will just take it back? What message is that supposed to send to myself, as a Member of the Mackenzie Delta, and the people I represent? We are different? We are martians? What? I get the feeling all of a sudden that we are being treated differently.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Minister, I believe most of the questions you did respond to. However, I get the feeling the Member wants to know why he feels that he is being treated differently in his riding. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, in my previous answer to the Member, I indicated that the formula was going to be reviewed annually and that we would be prepared at any time to discuss the issue with the community. If we still cannot resolve it then, we will have to find some other way to deliver the program. This is not saying we are treating a community differently that is saying we will deal with the community up front and see if we can resolve the issue with them. If not then, we will have to find some other way to deal with it. It is important to point out too that the community delivery of this program was piloted in 11 communities across the Northwest Territories, including small ones like Providence, Holman Island, Igloolik, (Coppermine) Kugluktuk. It was not

piloted just in large communities. It was piloted more in the smaller communities than in the large ones. It is from those pilot projects that we got a lot of our information about timing and developed our numbers for the formula. I was not intending to make it sound like we are treating any community differently. If any community has a problem with feeling that the program is inadequately resourced, we are prepared to discuss it with them and see if we cannot help them understand what the expectations are and how we think they can deliver the program within the formula, because we have found it to work in other communities. If we cannot come to some resolution then, we will have to find some other way to deliver the program. That is all I was saying. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. I recognize Mr. Miltenberger.

Mr. Chairman, I would just like some clarification as I am trying to follow this discussion. There are x-number of hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on income support. I am assuming, in Fort McPherson, or whatever the figure is, I am not sure. This $4,000 that I keep hearing reference to, is that to pay somebody's salary over the course of the year to deliver this on a once-a-month basis? Is that what the $4,000 is?

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My understanding is, the Member was referring to that as the contribution we provide to the community agency which delivers the program, which they would use to cover their costs for delivering it, whether that is salary or however they chose to do it.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Total contributions, $189.451 million. Mr. Erasmus.