Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the Minister for that. I think that would be a huge move to do something like that for the students. Just before I close, I want to mention again about the income support and the need to monitor how the money is spent. You said before, you offered to pay directly. We are supplying the money; I don't think there should be an offer. I think it should be mandatory, standard, I am going to pay the fuel bill. I am not going to pay you $500 to go pay your fuel bill. We are going to pay directly from here. That way you know the fuel bill is being paid, and with paying the credit at the store, I think that's another good move. There are some people that will continue to be honest about it and use the money for what it was intended, but there are also a few of them who will ruin it for everybody else. These are the people all these policies that are made to protect the honest ones from. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will leave it at that.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. I didn't hear a question there. Next on the list I have Mr. Braden.

Briefly, Mr. Chairman, I just want to back up the discussion or the point we are making on the delivery on the Public Housing Subsidy Program has suffered this problem early in its implementation and it continues, and that is the tenants have to turn their cost and monthly expense reports to the income support officer. This, from my understanding, seems to be where a lot of the hold-up is. The front-line people at the income support offices were processing the rental and the cost information in order for the tenant to satisfy the housing authority; something of that nature. I think with some recent information I had through the rentals officer is that their caseload is about triple what it has been and it's almost entirely due to this administrative snag and the lags that people have in clearing their information and then in terms of falling behind in their rent. It does not seem to be the spending or the money management habits of people change, rather it's the habits of how our system has changed.

Mr. Chairman, I do want to support the Minister in holding the line to the policies and administering this program and I think in a more responsible way. That's why I support the transition of this part of the program from the Housing Corporation to ECE because, as the Minister explained, it was so diversified across the Housing Corporation's system that we were losing some control. It needed to be somewhat centralized again. So I want to see the idea continue that we can do a better job of implementing this, but I think there is something on the customer service side that we may be missing in this. I hope the Minister can turn his attention to it on a very quick basis.

That's my only comment, Mr. Chairman, just to back up what my colleagues have said about implementation so far.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. No question there. Next on the list I have Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to speak regarding income security. We all know it's a subject that I guess a lot of us hope we can get away from sometimes. But we have to go back to reality that the reason the program is there is for people who need support, not there to help people who can work. It's there as a last resort for people who really need the assistance to get by for the month. That's my understanding of the program.

Some of my colleagues, Mr. Chairman, touched on the transfer of the funds from the Housing Corporation to income support. Again, I agree with some of my colleagues here that it's still a problem, especially in small communities. I will give you an example, Mr. Chairman. I raised it the other day. With income support clients who are going to post-secondary education outside of the communities, I understand that we have a minimum of three months that they can leave the community. Who is going to finish a program in three months if you have to leave for a six-month program? It's very clear under the policy it's a minimum of three months and a maximum of two years.

In one case the Minister is saying the mistake was made by the local housing authority. I don't think so. It depends on how you interpret the policy. If you had a program for two years, granted, understanding that people might need housing but if they have enough units, I think they should hold onto that unit. That is where the problem was encountered, Mr. Chairman. After three months, the income support worker just said I'm sorry we can't pay the O and M of the housing unit. That's why they got into the situation where they ended up $5,000 plus in terms of payments. As the Minister indicated the other day, that's been rectified. I think it's important that these kinds of things should be looked at.

I just hope down the road that if we are gong to keep the system the way it is today, we hope the transition can run smoothly.

I want to talk a bit about productive choices. Sure, you can stay home and watch your child. You can go get ice and wood for the elders. You can go hunting for the elders. These are just some of the productive choices that are identified by the department. In reality, when you look at it, how does this help you out in the long term, so you get a productive choice so that you are able to do something with what you have learned and not out shovelling snow just to make up for the house so they can get income support. To me, that's not a productive

choice. That's just doing slave labour for $200 a month for a single person. You are not gaining any experience; you are just going out there to do something the department wants them to do. A productive choice is when you go out and work with an organization, sit in the office for eight hours or something like that. Learn something, let's have a productive choice. In the end, you learn something.

I don't know what we can do, Mr. Chairman. We've talked about it so many times. For the last three years, we've talked about it. We talked about it for the last year and a half after the transfer of money from the Housing Corporation to income support. I just hope that some day we will get it right and we don't have any more complaints about the Housing Corporation, LHOs and income support workers. These are just a few comments I want to make, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Again, there was no question there. I will go to our next speaker, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a question on student financial assistance. Can I ask the Minister what is the maximum amount of payable loan that a student who qualifies can get from the NWT? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe the loan limit is $47,000.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to state, and I have said this many times, I do appreciate and believe that we do have one of the most, if not the most, generous SFA programs probably in the country and probably around the world. I have certainly been a beneficiary of that and I don't think I could have gotten the post-secondary education that I was able to get and it would have been much more difficult to get that were it not for the program that we have.

So I know that we been increasing the budget over the years for eligible amounts for the students, but I think what is going on in the student tuition fees all across the country is just eating up all the gains we are making. When I went to university in '85-86, I think it was around $1,000 a year to go to university. When I went back another few years later, for a three-year program, I think the tuition fee was about $1,500 and within three years it went up to $5,000. Now I think we are looking at over $10,000. When the tuition fee was at $1,500, I think the maximum amount that I was able to borrow was $3,200. That's what I remember. So I think while we are quite generous in our program. I think there are some students who need to borrow even more than $46,000. I know that people I know who are in post-secondary education in other parts of the country, it's not unheard of to walk out of post-secondary education with a $100,000-plus loan. Of course, there are advantages to getting this education and they would have a better means of paying for that.

I was at that reception for the nursing grads I think the Minister mentioned yesterday. One of the students spoke to me about whether or not it was possible to increase their loan amount. So these are not grants. It's just that if you have to do bridge programming or take any other programming to get to the post-secondary education and by the time you finish three or four years of grad degree, it's easy to end up with more than $46,000. You are not able to have work that would give you any significant amount of income while you are at school. I would like to ask the Minister if there is any room to increase the loan amount or at least maybe have flexibility there where if a student is in their last year and if they establish that they need a bit of an increase to finish that program, could there be provisions to do that? I am talking about repayable loans. I am not talking about grants. I would like to ask the Minister if he would consider looking at that.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are aware that this is becoming more of a concern, because we are starting to hear about it from some people. We now have 11 people in the Territories who have hit their loan limit, which is a bit of a surprise. We are talking about proposing an increase to the overall limits of the revolving fund which would allow us to increase the loan limit, as well as taking a look at whether or not the monthly amounts are adequate. So that is something we are taking a look at right now.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that answer. As always, I would like to set a time limit on that. Could I get the Minister to come back to us with his findings and give us an idea with a possibility of implementing this prior to the next school year? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

I would be happy to get that information back to the standing committee. I think I would be able to do that by April. In terms of when it could be implemented, that's going to depend on what the costs turn out to be. If we can find a way to do it within the program cost, then we could do it immediately for next year. Otherwise, I may either have to come back for supplementary funding or run it through the business plan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Anything further, Ms. Lee? We are on page 8-33, activity summary, income security, operations expenditure summary, $66.119 million.

Thank you. Page 8-36, activity summary, income security, grants and contributions, grants, total grants and contributions, $9.051 million.

Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. An aspect of the Student Financial Assistance Program and I believe this was something that we had discussed in previous

budget cycles and it has to do with students who are attending adult basic education classes. Mr. Chairman, it came to our attention through constituents that students who are attending Aurora College's ABE Program were eligible and did receive student financial assistance money. However, students who were enrolled at the identical program at the Native Women's Association were not eligible. The Minister, in a previous discussion, committed to look into that and see that it hopefully could be corrected in this year's budgeting. How are we doing in that discrepancy, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.