Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, the work of this board is very important. It's very important that we have representation on it. In order to fill that position and get on with the important work the board has, I have agreed with the Minister that we will provide him with more than one name. If he feels he doesn't want to just rubberstamp the one name we give him, we will give him more names. Mr. Speaker, I appeal to all the Members of this House to think about other names that we could put forward to get this board fully represented and on with its important work. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I sense he's been feeling left out lately.

In my Member's statement, I outlined the run around that our constituents must go through in attempting to pay their rent for social housing. Mr. Speaker, we want them to pay their rent, but the number of hoops that we are putting them through I think would be a discouragement to anybody paying their rent. Can the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment inform this Assembly what he intends to do to reduce the apparent bottleneck in income support offices and speed up the transmittal of rental calculation information to local housing authorities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mrs. Groenewegen is right. As we have seen this program move from one department to another, the subsidy program has definitely shown us or caused us some problems with that transition. We have formed a working group that involves everybody right from my deputy minister to the head of the Housing Corporation and regional staff to try to deal with issues like the one that the Member brings forward. As we heard about them, we try to address them on a case-by-case basis. I am not sure if the Member's constituent needs to come into the office every month. In this transition, some of our ECE offices have been looking at all the clients to see whether or not they might be put on a bi-monthly or tri-monthly system of coming in. That is certainly one thing we could do to try to ease the situation. I would certainly appreciate the opportunity to see if we can't work with the Member and her constituent to address these circumstances. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In this day of modern information technology, has the Minister given any consideration to a shared computer information system that would allow the ECE office to transmit the rent calculation information to the housing authority in a more timely manner, somehow that they could both access the same source of information? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will certainly challenge my department with that suggestion. If it would speed up the process, then I think it's something we should take a look at.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell me whether all income support workers in the NWT are now trained to do rent calculations, and how are communities without permanent income support workers, how is the rent being calculated in those communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Two questions there. The Minister may answer one or both. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Because of turnover, I can't say that today every single employee has complete training. We may have some new employees who may not have completed training, but there is regular and ongoing training. There was a training session for income support workers just last week, and we do ensure that our supervisors work with new people to provide training in the regions where necessary. I believe that all of our employees are up to date. We work to ensure that happens. In most communities where we do not have a full-time or part-time worker, the service is provided by visits that workers may make to the community, and through the provision of 1-800 services. We're also trying to work very closely with the local housing authorities and are discussing whether or not we could work with one of their offices to perhaps deliver the programs in those communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.,

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, Mr. Speaker, I think that people are very interested in being timely in paying their rent. They don't want to have a bad record of rent payment, but I think we are making it somewhat difficult for them and I will certainly look forward to any report of streamlining or enhancing the system that would help this group of tenants in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. I don't know if I heard a question there, but, Mr. Dent, you may have heard a question.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As part of the Income Security Program, we are, in fact, trying to streamline all of our processes for delivering subsidy services to our citizens. I have committed to reporting to the Standing Committee on Social Programs as we work through that process. I'd be happy to commit to delivering the same information in this House.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Minister of Justice, Mr. Bell.

Mr. Speaker, thank you. I know that this is of particular concern right now in the Inuvik region. I know that the Member and Member Roland also attended a community meeting that was, I believe, hosted by the mayor to have some discussion and talk to the RCMP about what they are doing and what the community justice folks are doing in the community. I think there is some good programming. I think it is going to take certainly the community to come together to work on this issue, but they need tools and they need help. I think that's where we need to come in, Mr. Speaker.

I can tell you, just back from my discussions with my provincial colleagues and the federal Ministers, this is something that a number of jurisdictions have raised, as well. We do have to find a way, there has to be a mechanism in our young offender legislation to allow us to deal with the situations where offenders are incorrigible and do need to be incarcerated. It's not the majority, but we do need a mechanism for this, Mr. Speaker. So I can tell you it is a national priority and we are talking about some reworking of the young offender legislation to accomplish this. Thank you.