Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to cover all three subjects that the honourable Member has made reference to. The DEA situation in Hay River, I understand what the Member is saying, I am open-minded about it. I have spoken with the Member on this and we are prepared to continue to talk. There are challenges for me, Mr. Chairman, because of the implications, and they stretch beyond Hay River.

I understand what the Member is saying, that this is not the world's end of money, but if we can do it in Hay River, we can do it in other communities in the Territories. That is one of the challenges, Mr. Chairman. I have tried to state that to the Hay River individuals to understand that I cannot just say yes, go ahead because of this. I am prepared to continue to work to see if we can find some sort of process that makes sense, but I do have challenges in this. I will leave it at that.

On the harmonization, we have delayed the implementation to give us an opportunity to address the specific issue that has very rightfully been brought forward by the Members, that individuals were not notified of the exact amounts of the rents, if they were receiving a rent increase. We need to do that. We need to get out there to tell those in the public who are going to be negatively affected by this of what kind of effect they will face. Additionally, we want to ensure that we are fair in the process, Mr. Chairman.

The third item, on day cares, we are putting $1 million more into day cares. It increases substantially the amount of support for a day care operator for startup, for O and M, operating and maintenance, Mr. Chairman, because we recognize that it was skimpy going for a lot of these operations. Most of them are volunteer, some of them are private businesses, but it is almost impossible to keep them operating on the kind of money they were being supported in. This, of course, is for licensed day cares, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to touch on graduation rates. I know Mr. Bell spoke on them a bit. Not so much the graduations but maybe the lack of, and the people who get caught just short of that stage.

We have a number of students who get lost in the high schools around the grade 10 mark, even between grade 8 and grade 12, who do not get through the school system. It is not because they are not good kids and they do not want to work. Some of them would make excellent workers and have an interest in only a specific field.

It has been brought to my attention a number of times that we are lacking in services out there that can pick these kids up. Whether it is partnering with industry, if it is someone who wants to get into welding or whatever trades that are out there, and they only need specific subjects in a grade 12 equivalency to get into that stream.

Are there any programs out there, or anyone working with industry who can identify some programs that these kids can get into, where they only have to take certain subjects to reach that grade equivalency that allows them to get into that trade and get themselves ready to get out there into the world and make some productive choices? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Some reference has been made today to graduation rates. I should point out something here, Mr. Chairman, that I think is important in it all. It is true, on a comparative basis, on a national basis, that the graduation rates are below national rates. There is no question about that. How that works is on the basis of taking 18 year olds, and that is the comparison. If we were to also take into account the 19 to 24 year olds, our graduation rates would increase by 10 percent.

The other factor that is not taken into account here are those individuals who drop out of school, take adult basic education, adult literacy and obtain the ability to enter into an apprenticeship program or a college program. We do not count those as part of our graduates. A lot of people have come back into the system who could be regarded as graduates from our system, even though they may have dropped out of our system at grade 11 with 90 credits, but they are not considered a graduate. They may have grade 9 and over time have improved themselves with literacy programs. Those individuals are not part of our system.

We have access programs at Aurora College for people who do not have grade 12 in nursing and in teacher education. It is a tremendous, successful program. You know, we have to look at the overall picture in this. I will carry on, Mr. Chairman, because the Member had specific questions.

On possibilities for students who do drop out, yes, it is a very critical area because we recognize people are dropping out. We are in the process of developing some alternate pathways for those individuals who see challenges in trying to get through high school. Right now, we have two processes. One is academic. The second is through the SNAP program, which is an apprenticeship style program. We are developing a third, and that would take into consideration occupations so that a person can go out to the workforce, get experience and then graduate with a diploma that would indicate on that diploma what kind of graduation that would be.

There are two other pathways in addition to that, which we are working on but do not have instituted yet. We have support from educators throughout the Territory on that, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Would that have to follow an Alberta curriculum, or would that be a program that would be controlled from our territorial level and would be recognized for any trade outside of the Territories as well?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think it is important to get some programs in place that we can pick up these students and get them ready for trades. Even though they cannot meet a full grade 12 equivalency that a trade may require, but it may only be needed in certain subjects to allow them into a certain trade.

I think there is room for improvement in the programs we have now to pick up these kids and get them through. It leads into the next area that I would like to address, but my colleague, Mr. McLeod, addressed it a bit. It is in the area of training. I think we are lacking an awful lot of training right now. If we are serious about and firmly believe that we are going to go ahead with the Mackenzie Valley pipeline and oil and gas exploration is going to take off, we are slow in the training. I think we have some very good examples to show us that once you wait for industry to be there, up and operating, and then you try and catch up to the industry with training, it is problematic.

I think it is very problematic in our diamond industry right now. We heard down in New York that some of these businesses are having a hard time trying to make a go of it because they do not have the trained people. They are trying to train them as they go along and it is problematic. They just cannot get caught up and put out enough product.

I think the same thing is going to happen in the oil and gas industry. If we wait until it is fully blown and going forward to try and start training people I think we are going to start to fall behind and it is going to be problematic for us.

If we are serious about big industry and oil and gas, I think we really have to put some training programs in place and try to get ahead of the game. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is correct, there is a tremendous opportunity out there. We do have programs in place. Is it enough? I do not think so, but we are making due with what we have. As a government ourselves, we are making a fairly decent investment. We do need the support of another jurisdiction, and that is the federal government, who are beneficiaries of this.

I must say industry has been very good and cooperative and working in many instances. There are shortcomings out there too and I think we have some challenges to work on those industries to say "Look, our people are most important."

I have been back and forth to Calgary, I am continuing that, to get a handle more and more on how we persuade industry to be participants. As I said, I have to be complimentary to some industries. Many of them out there are very supportive. We are trying to work together on this whole thing with many partners here. It is the people themselves, it is industry, it is federal government, it is our groups and so forth.

There is no doubt that we are working on short-term training plans. Safety training is a big part of it. We are working on longer-term plans, and that is getting people advanced training so they can get the jobs they should have and rightfully should retain. My assistant deputy minister is part of a pipeline planning group that includes all of the players, Mr. Chairman, and that just happened recently.

The next area that has been identified is environmental monitoring, which I know Members are very interested in. We want to continue to see what we can do in that whole area. We have a lot of areas that we can work on. It is a matter of can we get enough resources and speed up here to try to address it for all people in the Territories? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a few more general comments to make. I am glad to hear the Minister has recognized that there is a need in the area of training and is identifying some of the potential solutions. However, I want to raise an issue that has really affected my community, and that is regarding housing.

Public housing is an area where there is a problem. I am not sure how many people are on income support or have been on income support. However, they are all low-income earners and at last count, we had six people evicted, who had to move out of their houses. I am told that we are going to see another 12 in the next month. Following that, we have another 30 on the list. We have roughly 50 people, 50 families in the community of Fort Providence that have been or are targeted for eviction. That is roughly 25 percent of all the households in that community. It is a real concern.

Until now, seniors have not had to pay rent. With the new harmonization strategy, they are targeted to pay rent. To me, it does not make sense. I do not think the whole strategy was initiated to bring additional hardship on the seniors in the communities. I wanted to know, because I am looking at some of the information that has been put out there by the public and some of the information that has been provided to us, the charts show a good portion, a large percentage, I think 83 percent would see reduction in rents.

I do not understand that. Seniors are now going to have to start paying rent. People receiving income support will see no change. Students will have to start paying rent. Is it because we are looking at reducing the minimum requirement of minimum monthly payment from $32 down to $20 that we are going to see such a big reduction, so many people will see a reduction in their rent? Is that what we are talking about, the people who are currently paying $32 and will now only have to pay $20 and we are supposed to stand up and cheer for that? Is that what we are talking about here?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The people who are affected by this will be income support individuals, low-income earners, students and seniors. The numbers, in the case of income support, low-income earners and students, in most cases are not negatively impacted. As a matter of fact, low-income earners benefit through this program. In some cases, seniors are affected.

However, as we had stated, what we are looking at most will be those who are negatively affected are ones that will be affected by up to $100 per month. What we have stated is that we need to look at the methodology of implementation of this. It needs a bit of time so that we can notify individuals of the implementation and, as I say, the methodology of implementation.

Mr. Chairman, my understanding is that we are going to be looking at the reduction in rent for low-income earners in public housing, who are currently paying $32 a month. We are going to reduce it to $20 a month, so every household will be saving $12. When it comes to seniors, in some cases where both seniors are receiving a pension up to $2,000, they will be paying around $300.

So on one end of the scale, we are raising the rent amounts from zero to $300 for some people and for the majority, we are reducing it by $12. That seems to be the selling point. I would like to ask the Minister if he could give me an explanation for that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are individuals in public housing who earn incomes that are considered fairly high, hence the reason for increasing the rents, Mr. Chairman. After all, social housing is meant for individuals with low incomes, those who cannot afford it. The staff show that there are a lot of individuals in social housing that are high-income earners.

So the funding, if they pay the appropriate rent according to incomes, then that revenue will be taken and redistributed to provide a productive choice incentive for those who are on income support, low-income students and low-income earners, Mr. Chairman. There is a productive choice for those who are perhaps financially challenged in our society. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I want to point out to the Minister that when we dealt with student financial assistance over the last year or so, there were a lot of concerns raised. The students demonstrated very well that the financial assistance they are receiving is just not enough. In this case, we have a Minister who is responsible for Education, responsible for training, and he is also responsible for the harmonization program, the strategy. If you ever walk into a community and take a look and get an inventory of the houses there, you will find that there is a severe shortage.

I pointed out yesterday in my Member's statement, 40 percent of the houses in Fort Providence are in core need. If you are a resident of that community, or any other community that is considered to be a small community in the North, you are lucky if you get a house. Once you get a house in public housing, you do not move.

In this case, what we are trying to do here is start charging students a higher fee. I would like to ask the Minister if he could tell me how increasing the rates for students in post-secondary or in training programs is going to encourage the people in the communities to go and take the courses, if they know they are going to have to pay rent while they are gone, if they know they are going to end up losing their house. How does this really fit into the larger scheme of things? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.