Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The student would be ineligible for one year, and they must also have repaid the monies to the program. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.

Mr. Speaker, I was just wondering if the Minister was made aware that there is some shortfall or shortcoming on how the students are deemed ineligible. They are given notice at the last minute. It is rather stressful for them. I was wondering if the Minister has any plans currently to review the students' progress and to let them know ahead of time so they are not stranded in some city or some educational institution and kind of left holding the bag wondering what to do next.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it is very clear in the directions for students when they are completing their forms that they must maintain satisfactory progress, passing marks and attendance. There is a clear definition of attendance that is set out, as well. In sending back an applicant declaration and consent, the students are required to sign a form that says that they will immediately notify the SFA program in writing if my or my spouse's personal information changes. That includes any educational changes.

The problem seems to stem from the fact that students can't get transcripts immediately. It takes a while for the institutions to get transcripts out and, therefore, the department doesn't become aware of a student's ineligibility until we get the transcripts, but the students should know what their marks are. If they haven't been successful at the required course load, and if they haven't attended enough school to qualify, they should be aware of that. It is clearly set out in the program. If they talked to one of the student financial assistance officers, they can get that laid out clearly. I guess we could consider, Mr. Speaker, putting up front in great big bold letters to make sure before you take any money from the program, that you know that you are actually qualified for it. But we send out e-mails. We make sure that, on the web site, it is very carefully laid out that you have to be successful in each semester in order to qualify for the next semester. Students are told that they should review their situation and talk to student financial assistance if anything has changed. That means if they had to drop out of a course, if they know they are failing a course, if they know that there is a problem, they should get hold of student financial assistance right away because there may be some impact on their subsequent funding. We encourage them to do that. During the course of the year, if things change, students should be contacting student financial assistance. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I really don't agree that the total onus is upon the student that is out there. They are just doing their best. We should do our best to encourage and support them as well. There must be something the department can do to improve their process, because I do have a case this fall, in fact. A student entered the spring session, completed that, was approved for summer session and completed that whole summer session quite successfully, and then the transcripts came in. In the fall, they were denied fall session as well as required to repay the summer session and, of course, the previous year, so it gets quite expensive. I was just wondering if the Minister could comment on that. There must be a way to improve it so that we are not penalizing the students, that they are encouraged and we say look, yes, you made a mistake but, Mr. Speaker, I don't think that they should have to be penalized for everything that they have been trying to do. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is difficult to say that we could solve this issue without penalizing students in a different way, because if we required students to demonstrate that they actually qualify for the funding before we sent the money out, then students would have to miss every second semester, because from the fall semester they would not have a transcript in time for the start of the winter semester for us to get the money to them. So we are depending on students to know how they are doing in their courses and to be aware that if they are failing at a level that will impact on subsequent student financial assistance, they should be talking to the student financial assistance officers very quickly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Your final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just in this short week alone, there have been many cases with regard to trouble with SFA and eligibility of students. The students are traveling out of the Territories. I would just like to ask the Minister if he will commit to reviewing the procedures that are currently existing as there is some identified shortfall in the system. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I said yesterday to Mrs. Groenewegen, I would be quite happy to take a look at what we can do to try and improve students' awareness of their responsibilities under the program. But short of refusing to issue monies without seeing a transcript, we can't stop this problem unless students are going to start to report that there is an issue themselves. So I will direct the department to look at what options we have to improve the communication to students to try and make them understand how the program works and what the implications may be if they are not being successful in school. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Item 6, oral questions. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The Minister of Justice, the Honourable Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I ought to be careful here because I misspoke when I answered some questions earlier on the hiring process at the North Slave Correctional Centre. I probably should have referred the questions to the Minister responsible for FMBS, because staffing is not the responsibility of the department. Staffing and the processes are overseen by the central agency. Mr. Speaker, all I can say in answer to the Member is that my understanding is that when job offers were made, there were people who were qualified to lay appeals on the basis that they had not been offered a job. They did that, and it took some time for the appeals to be heard through the regular staffing process. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Supplementary, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am not sure if I got any new information out of that answer that the Minister gave. He is the Minister that sits on top of the correctional centre.

---Laughter

He's shuffling off the RFP chaos to Minister Roland, and now Minister Roland is responsible for all these hiring problems at the correctional centre. Mr. Speaker, my question to Minister Dent is there was obviously a problem with the hiring process, it took so long for the vacancies to be filled. He indicated in his answers that it was because of the length of time that it took to appeal and that's why they couldn't hire the new staff. But it appears that wasn't the problem.

I want to know from the Minister, what is his information about what other problems have gone on in hiring staff for the new facility that has caused such morale problems at the centre? I don't think that's the responsibility of Minister Roland, as much as he's in charge of lots of things. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, last week when I was answering these questions I think some members of the union got the idea that I was referring to the union as delaying the process. I want to be very clear that was not the case. The process that caused us the amount of time to fill the positions is entirely one that is within government and it is set up in order to make sure that we're vigilant in our staffing to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly and in a manner consistent with government policies.

In this situation, there were people who were interviewed for positions who were not selected. They have the opportunity, if they feel they are qualified and should have had a job offer, to file an appeal. In this case, a good number of people who were interviewed did. In order to work through all of the appeals, it took a considerable amount of time following the processes as set out in our staffing procedures. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Supplementary, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The information seems to be that there is informational knowledge within the union or people who do this kind of work that suggests that there is a lot of work that can be done to shorten that process. There is no reason, from how I'm reading it, why the government has this system set up in such a way that it takes the appeal as long as four months. It seems to me that this is a very one-sided operation. It's really the government that has set out the appeal process and the union is just following whatever was agreed to. I'd like to know from the Minister if he's willing to revisit that and see how we could do this better. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Premier, Mr. Handley.