Mr. Chairman, I cannot believe the Minister would try to shrug off the responsibilities for students and housing here. It is clearly an additional cost to anybody who is planning to go back to school if this program comes into place. He should take that into consideration and he should be reminded that he has joint responsibility for this program along with the Minister for the Housing Corporation. He cannot defer any of the responsibility to another Minister.

I understand one of the issues that is also part of the strategy is to start passing on the delivery service of income support to housing officers. LHOs are being targeted to deliver income support programs. I want to know what kind of training there is in place. This strategy was targeted to be implemented April 1st. There has been no training. Now we are talking about income support being delivered out of housing offices. What kind of training is out there? What are the plans? If it is anything like the oil and gas training that we are seeing, then I have a lot of room for concern, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, on the student housing situation, Mr. Chairman, we do our best in order to provide as much housing as we can for our students through the college system. What we have to recognize is that our students who are in the housing provided by the college are paying $200, $300, $400 rent, but there are many students out there who have incomes far beyond those students. They may have incomes of several thousands of dollars a month. They pay $30 a month because they are in social housing. There is an equity matter here, Mr. Chairman, that has to be taken into consideration. Not to be shoving people out of housing, that is not the point. However, there is the matter of need to address the issue of who can afford what. That is important in the whole thing.

I will ask Ms. Allen to address the issue of training with regard to the harmonization.

Yes, the Member had asked about training in terms of the harmonization project. For this next year, we are looking at one co-location site. It is in Fort Resolution, where we would do a pilot there and we would train the staff, both the Housing Corporation and the Education, Culture and Employment staff, on both the programs. Throughout the next year when the harmonization project goes through, we will be cross-training both staff. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will try to be brief on this one, but following up on Mr. McLeod's questioning on students and where they might find themselves, knowing that this harmonization package was in there and if implemented, would impact on students, how is the department going to address the fact that in some communities, you have a student who qualifies for student financial assistance and travels outside the community and at times, if it is a short program, they could hang on to their home in their home community yet have to pay rent in a different location. Now, they would have to pay rent in their own home. It is double jeopardy here.

I have some concerns that would mirror Mr. McLeod's in that area, because now we are going to hit students twice, in that aspect. Is that addressed somehow in the student financial assistance? Is there going to be an increased allotment for accommodation?

My understanding is that you are allowed a certain amount of money for accommodation and so much for food. There is criteria established on the existing model now. If you throw this in there, that would not be addressed. So all of a sudden, you are going to find students in a crunch, short $300 or $400 a month. How is that being addressed?

In closing, how has that been considered in the overall implementation? Thank you.

Thank you. The Member raises a very good question. If any student is keeping two houses in two locations, it is going to cost more. There is no doubt about that. If the student is in college housing, there are set amounts in the college housing. Through student financial assistance, there is money for that.

In terms of in the community, how I would expect it will happen is that if they are in a productive choice, that will be taken into consideration.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That leads to some concern because not all communities have the same definition of productive choice or what is available. There still would be some rent situation into that.

When somebody applies for student financial assistance and the requirement of funds are taken into consideration, would there not in fact be a consideration of what their accommodations are? If they find they are in a home community and manage to take a course in their home community and their rent is taken care of, then student financial assistance would not necessarily pay them any funding for lodging. Is that correct?

Let's take a single student. A single student would have, for a living allowance, $700. That would be called their living allowance. It could include accommodation and food. They would have that amount.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So it would not matter if you were in public housing or student housing provided by the campus or college, you would qualify for the same amount of money?

You would qualify for the amount of money. You may need more money, so there would be a needs-assessed loan, depending on your category, so you could qualify for that as well.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, in some student's cases, they would have to go for a needs-assessed loan and create a larger debt for themselves before they go back into the workforce. The other side is if you are in college housing, in those cases, cafeterias are available. Is a meal amount included in that college housing or is it separate from that?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will ask Ms. Allen to address that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let's go back to a single student. A single student would get $700. That amount of money would be the living allowance. The college, for example, in Fort Smith, they have accommodations there where you can buy your own food. You would get the amount of money from student financial assistance and you would use it for your accommodation and your food.