Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't think the promise was made that we would have these one-stop locations for April 1st of this year. We are planning to implement them in the course of the year, but it is something that we'll start working on in this coming year. It would be our goal to set up operations that could be used by other departments in the future. As we move forward with the amalgamation of our income security programs, I think that is certainly one of the options that we will be laying out to other departments to participate with us in them. But at this point, we're only talking about the services that are being provided by Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Braden.

Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. The note that I was looking at said that on April 1st, 2006, one-stop community service centres will begin delivering a range of income security programs. So these are going to be rolled out over the course of the year. Is there a sequence or schedule of communities that we can anticipate would see this kind of service centre opened in the coming fiscal year, Madam Chair?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I should make it clear, too, that our goal with these service centres is to make sure that the staff who are in them have access to information from other departments where the public may be interested in accessing information, as well as from federal programs. So we are going to try and make sure that we have the information available on programs that we're not administering, but may be of interest to our clients.

This will start in those communities where we have staff on hand right now. That will be the first priority. It will be a bit more of a challenge and we'll have to examine how to do it in those communities where we don't have full-time staff, or we're doing it by contract, or we may have people who go in on an occasional basis to an office there. But our goal will be, then, to make sure that every day there was some way of the public reaching us in all those communities through those offices. We'll probably have to

set up different approaches in different communities, but the initial emphasis will be on those offices where we have staff. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Braden.

Thank you. Thank you very much. On a somewhat related aspect, Madam Chair, and very much to the staffing and people side of our business, is, I guess, an orientation, or an expectation, of our staff, Madam Chair, to be able to take on a role as counsellors, as support, as assistance to income support clients or people who come looking for help. I think this is something that, over time, we have lost in some of our frontline service agencies, Madam Chair. Such as income support, which from the perspective of some of my constituents, and I'm not saying this is entirely across the board, but where they've encountered a process where our people basically have a set of rules and criteria, and they will talk to people and figure out whether or not they fit, and issue cheques, or benefits, or whatever, according to a prescribed list of criteria and that's it. We really seem to have lost a sense of a real responsibility of ours to be more proactive and to take on a role of assisting, of counselling, of course where the individual welcomes that. I wanted to ask the Minister, are we going to be looking at that aspect of our service delivery, Madam Chair, where our people are trained, or skilled, or ready to take on more of a one-on-one role of assisting, rather than essentially being bookkeepers or monitors of a case file? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to make sure that all of our staff at the local area are ready to take on the function as of April 1st, there were training sessions conducted in February. We had all the local staff in for training sessions. So it is our hope that between that and ongoing training sessions, that we will be able to have a seamless transfer of all of the responsibilities and moving into the one-stop service centres.

In response to the Member's question about counselling, it is not our intention to start to hire social workers who are trained to counsel people. We are, however, embarking on a collaborative process with Health and Social Services to ensure that we are approaching our clients more on a case management basis. This has been undertaken here for a number of months now on a pilot basis in Yellowknife and is showing very good results. We are very close to meeting to establish the conditions around which that collaboration can take place, so we will have a protocol in place very soon. Then working in conjunction with Health and Social Services we will look to roll that out to other communities in the North.

So, yes, we are moving towards more of a case management process, but it's one that's collaborative. It's not where we're going to try to take on additional functions.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Next on this page I have Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Just the line items that describe income security, particularly with the public housing subsidies and I want a detail some of my concerns with respect to public housing subsidies. Just once again, if I could ask the Minister, Madam Chair, just how is the type of, I don't know, how is it, application for public housing subsidy, is it different from regular income support? The Minister indicted that there would be no change in subsidies available to public housing clients, but I'm not entirely convinced that is going to be the case. If the Minister, Madam Chair, could detail, once again, how the public housing subsidy application is different from income support. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The application for public housing subsidy will be exactly the same on April 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and sort of going forward, as it is today. The process of assessing the income is exactly the same. There is no change to the assessment of income; there is no change to the definitions of what constitutes income. The whole process is remaining the same for determining what the subsidy should be for a family after April 1st as it is today.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just trying to get some clarification so that I can convey it to constituents about the public housing subsidies. I know that even as we speak these consultations are taking place in the communities and we're not having the benefit of those same public housing subsidies consultations. So there's no change in the public housing client. Does that mean that public housing client is not going to be filling out an application form? I'm just trying to determine whether, if there is an application form, is it the income support application form? Because there's a big distinction there for people back home. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The form will be a separate application form for the public housing rental subsidy.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you.

I have on the list Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I wanted to ask the Minister in terms of the idea of the one-stop shopping concept model and that will be very beneficial to people in my region to have one place that they can do their business. I'm thinking more, Madam Chair, of the older people who require more attention, more services for them to go to one place and that. The communities are pretty small. They can all go to one location where all the services can be provided to them by the different representatives of the government. So I know the Minister indicated earlier that they're working towards that. I wanted to ask the Minister this question: Is there any light at the end of the tunnel in terms of finally having a one-stop shopping centre for the elders, for the older people, actually for the whole community, which makes

more sense? Could we see something within the next year or two years from now, or within the life of this government, that we can bring back to our region? I want to ask that question, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Initially the clients will be able to see the programs like the senior home heating subsidy, senior citizens' supplementary benefits, income assistance, public housing rental subsidies. We're also expecting to be able to provide clients with information about student financial assistance and a number of other government and federal government income security programs. So our goal is to make sure that, in particular, income security programs are starting to focus in these offices. Whether or not we will be able to bring in other departments to those offices, we would think in the long run that would be the right way to go, but whether or not we'll be able to get there in the next year, I think that might be a bit optimistic. But I would agree with the Member that it would make sense for us to start moving in that direction. It would certainly help to ease some of the confusion in communities about where people have to go, stop some of them from having to go back and forth from office to office, and it may help us to be more economic in how we deliver our programs. So it is our goal to make sure that these offices can be looked at, eventually, as broader than just Education, Culture and Employment offices.