Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a concern from the communities in the Sahtu about the local summer hiring of local students in the Sahtu communities. Mr. Speaker, changes need to happen in terms of this program to be successful in our small communities.

There is an EI requirement on local summer students that we want to hire through the service contract with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. The GNWT provides us with $5 per hour and the agencies cover the request for regional pay for summer students. We are aware the GNWT may change the summer student program. It really doesn’t fit our communities in this time we need here. We have been working on this issue for a number of years and we seem to be hitting a brick wall on this issue. The response is that this is the GNWT’s requirement and it is a final

decision. There seems to be very little flexibility in terms of moving on this issue here. It has been quite a frustrating time for some of our agencies who want to hire summer students. A simple question for the government is: Why is there an EI requirement for local summer hire students here? It is a GNWT program. It is a Government of Canada program. Regardless of which government, more effort should be put in resolving this program’s problems for us in our communities.

Some of the organizations hired summer students last summer. Most of them buy clothes and some of them help out with some of the families that are in desperate need for helping out with the household needs. These students here help out with the families in the communities as some of the parents are unemployed. Again, Mr. Speaker, they have high unemployment in our communities and we need to help the GNWT to help with this local summer hire student requirement.

Mr. Speaker, the organizations in our communities are looking forward for this government to see if they would work with the federal government in terms of making the requirement for summer local hire students, especially with the restrictions on EI restrictions only are allowed to apply for these types of programs. It doesn’t make any sense for our summer students to be applying for it as they won’t be eligible. I will be having questions for the Minister on this issue.