Thank you, Mr. Bell. The honourable Premier, Mr. Kakfwi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will take the question as notice. Thank you.

Thank you. The question has been taken as notice. Item 6, oral questions. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as in my Member's statement, my question will be going to the Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment. As I stated, the Midnight Sun Daycare is going through a critical time right now. There is work being done and I would like to thank the regional staff of the department for being as supportive as they are.

Myself, working with the Minister from this end, I have had as much information as the Minister has had, and he has updated me on my information from time to time. I would like to know from the Minister at this point, has there been any further work done in this area, in the area of support for the daycare? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Minister responsible for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Roland brought this issue to my attention last week and we have been trying to keep up to date on a daily basis. It is a critical situation. I was told the daycare was in need of $40,000 in order to continue operating. It seems that there were a number of issues.

One of the issues was health and safety and licensing. Our staff have worked on that with the various responsible individuals. Another one was staffing and financial. That seems to be at the moment the remaining critical area to try and solve the financial problems so that the daycare can solve the staffing problem.

Our staff have been working with the daycare individuals to ensure that as much effort is put in to trying to get local support on that. At the moment, that is the status of the information I have. I understand there has been some commitment by various organizations financially. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Ootes. Supplementary, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Minister stated, that is the information as it sits today. I have as well been keeping up to date on a day-to-day basis with the daycare group and there are commitments being made in the community.

My question is, are there no longer any dollars within the department that regions can access in situations like this? Especially, Mr. Speaker, since it was the Department of Education, Culture and Employment that identified a number of areas that the daycare had to address and suggested as well that they get adequate trained staff in the early childhood initiative area. Also, is there any funding that could be accessed at headquarters, not only by my community, but by other regions? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Minister responsible for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are two areas that we fund. Early childhood programs provides start-up funding for operation and maintenance. I have been informed that is done on a first come, first served basis, so it has been fairly well depleted this year.

The other one is the healthy children's initiative, whereby we fund approximately $1.8 million to various areas. Again, it is my understanding that the allocations have been made. However, we are looking to see if we can find some funding. It falls a bit outside of the areas that we can fund because normally we do not fund for staffing costs, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Supplementary, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Therein lies one of the problems. There is a lot of funding that can be accessed by groups like the Midnight Sun Daycare group, but their funding is tied and limited by restrictions on how it can be used. Is there any flexibility from within the department to deal with cases like this? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Minister responsible for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are looking at taking the current contribution funding and see if we can revise that so we can address this specific issue in the case of the daycare in Inuvik. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Ootes. Final supplementary, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can the Minister commit that he will continue to try and work with the daycare and the Inuvik regional department or his department in Inuvik to try to come to a successful conclusion on this matter and keep me updated? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Minister responsible for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Ootes.

Yes, Mr. Speaker. I am very familiar with the fact that this is a critical issue in Inuvik. I have asked my staff to keep me informed on a daily basis on the progress of this. I certainly will keep Mr. Roland informed as progress is made in this area.

Thank you, Minister Ootes. Item 6, oral questions. The honourable Member for Thebacha, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question, as the Minister for Health indicated, is addressed to the stable of dead horses across the room. In particular, the Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment. It is in regard to student financial assistance.

Yesterday in this House, the issue came up about the need to relocate this down to the community level, to the regional level. The Minister indicated that there is a significant amount of work being done with career development staff, bringing them into the office to show them all the improvements to the system. I would just like the Minister to confirm in spite of those improvements that every application from all over the Northwest Territories will still come to headquarters in Yellowknife for the crew of five to review, decide on, approve or deny and disperse funds for every single student financial assistance application? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Minister responsible for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I take exception to the fact that we are referred to as dead horses. I have very good staff in my department and the dramaticism that Mr. Miltenberger puts on this is unwarranted. We are making progress in this whole area.

As I mentioned yesterday, and I emphasize this, we are making progress in this whole area of taking regional staff and training them and ensuring that they can access the computer system, ensuring that we put application forms, the student guidebook and so forth online. This will help streamline it. That is our initial step in this whole process, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Ootes. Supplementary, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If the Minister takes exception, I suggest he talk to his colleague down the aisle from him. My question to the Minister is this, will every application for student financial assistance still continue to come to Yellowknife and will the hundreds and hundreds of students to be processed by the five staff to be reviewed, approved or denied and the funds dispersed? Is that still the plan, in spite of all these nice additions and showing up what they are doing to the system? Thank you.