Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the income support program has two areas that could potentially be looked at in terms of what the Member has stated. One is the area of earned income. We provide, on a monthly basis, Mr. Speaker, $400 that an individual could earn beyond the amount of income support the individual receives. The other side of that is the unearned area, Mr. Speaker. There are a number of areas there that would be considered unearned income. Thank you.

Supplementary, Mr. Nitah.

The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, for income support clients, the unearned income portion is not exempt, Mr. Speaker, so there is no dollar amount specifically attached to that, but there is to the earned income portion, as I stated. An individual could earn $400 beyond the income support and that will be exempted, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

Supplementary, Mr. Nitah.

The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there is an area called unearned income. I don't have that amount and that would be very difficult to assess how much that would impact on the department, Mr. Speaker, without doing a lot of work on it, which we can do. I don't have that type of information here.

Supplementary, Mr. Nitah.

The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member has asked if we could provide information on the amount of dollars that would be affected by unearned income. I will instruct the department to give me that information as quickly as possible, so that we can pass it on to the Members, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Item 6, oral questions. The honourable Member for Deh Cho, Mr. McLeod.

The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the National Child Benefit Program was a national program in which federal money is passed to individuals in the Territories with children. We have developed, in parallel to that, an NWT child benefit program to help the working poor to ensure that the children of working poor have an opportunity to provide some extra funding, but all the money originally came from the national program. We supplemented that for different programs we have developed, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Supplementary, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am glad to see that this program that's in place is a program that would target the reduction of child poverty to ensure families are better off as a result of working. I wonder if the Minister if he could tell me if this program is working or not.

The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We believe it's working, Mr. Speaker. It provides a number of areas of support to the territorial support programs for various children's programs throughout the Territories. That's provided to the regions and, in turn, the communities. In addition, there is money that goes directly into the hands of the working poor. So we feel that it does supplement their incomes, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Supplementary, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am certainly glad to hear that and I am totally convinced that families that have income low enough to qualify deserve to hang onto dollars. However, I am quite concerned when these dollars are calculated as part of income to be assessed for rent that we are defeating the whole purpose of the target of omitting child poverty. Does the Minister agree that by calculating it as part of income for rent, that on one hand we are paying it out and on one hand we are taking it back? We are really not helping them at all.

The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Ootes.