Thank you Mr. Chairman. I am very happy to provide some comments to the Minister’s opening of his budget for this type of discussion.

Mr. Chairman, a lot of issues that I think could go a long ways, you know I wish that the department would find a way, and they haven’t here, but I wish they would find a way that we could address some of our issues that we have in Income Support with moving the social work component back into Income Support. That was a mistake made by the government in its wisdom, back in the day, when they thought, well, maybe the social worker component should be over with the Department of Health and Social Services. Now, whoever came up with that idea, and I am sure they thought they were genius, but you know as I look at it and try to help people through the income support process, I mean a lot of people have more issues before them and challenges that are before them than an average data entry person can provide. I think the guidance of a social work type of person in that job could do a lot to inspire people to help them get back on their feet to provide them opportunity and just that little ‘umph’ of a pat them on the back and say, you know, look, we will help you through this, we will give you some ideas and have you tried these. It is a complete philosophy change as opposed to if somebody shows up and says, look, I can’t cover rent and they do the little tap on their keyboard with their numbers and say you either qualify or you don’t qualify and I find it is a missing element, if I may define it as simple as this, Mr. Chairman, it is a human element being lost in the income support process. When it works and it is seamless that your paperwork flows and flows and goes, you know, most people don’t care, but I think what that process really needs to do is help inspire people to get on their own feet so they can get back in the running and get back in the game. Sometimes a little inspiration from someone with the right type of background, the right type of personal experience. I mean, some of the best income support workers I have heard of are people who have bad days

behind them. They have had some experiences, they understand what the real world is about and they understand, they relate with people who show up at their office with some other troubles and I mean, as sort of a point to this issue is some of the best addictions counsellors, as an example, are people who have gone through those troubles and they can say, look, when I tell you it is going to be tough on you, they really mean it, because they know it. That is sort of the issue that I am trying to bring to light here, and I have always felt that this is a gap for a long-term strategy in the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. I would not want to say in any way that the staff are not well meaning and I would not want to define in any way that they are not dedicated, I think they are. I think many of them probably carry many of the difficult challenges, that they have seen through the day, home. You know, it is the style of staffing I think could go a long way.

I’m going to change gears, Mr. Chairman, and I’m going to talk about an issue that has been raised. I think it was raised just a minute ago. I hear about the milk subsidy and although I’m not particularly a big fan of it, and this sort of relates back to the income support, because I’ve always been concerned about it’s not the quality of the milk in the sense of what that will do to a young person’s life. I grew up on it. That’s all I drank as a child and my mother always said that I probably drank more milk than anyone she knew. But I think that the government providing a subsidy specific to that is the wrong approach and that if they feel that it’s a money issue -- and this ties back to the income support -- then we should really identify on what these things actually cost. Because if it’s a government policy that I would not object to say, well, we want to make sure that parents can parent, making sure that they can afford the extra cost of milk. Whether it’s in a community or wherever, why don’t we just bump up the income support rate to reflect that? I think it’s important, and this is back to my theme of the income support issue, which is it’s important to empower people to make the decisions themselves. I mean, there are certain people that, you know, we will always need to be there to help hold their hand and certainly there will always be people who will have to do it for them. But I think, on average, back to the social work element, I think the job there is to empower. And when it comes to things like that, if it’s an affordability issue, I think that’s a policy question for the House here. We could make the decision and say if milk is too expensive and you’ve got kids under your care and you’re getting social help, then you should get a little extra money. To me, that’s the right approach. It’s just about the philosophy.

Mr. Chairman, the next issue I’d like to touch on, and of course I’ll have more comments when we get to the page, but the next area I’d like to touch

upon is, hopefully the Department of Education will soon start to put on its radar and agenda to develop junior kindergarten. As sort of cited in some manner by my previous speaker Mr. Krutko, early childhood education is very important and eventually some government is going to have to start to decide that it’s better to invest up front than it is to invest in cleaning up the mess. If we can give kids the best opportunity before then... I mean, how many times have we heard the old adage that, you know, an educated child is the best investment we could ever make? I think people are starting to have a higher expectation of services they can have and, certainly, give their kids the best start as possible when it comes to an education background.

Mr. Chairman, the other element to providing a strong base to things like early childhood education and day homes is stabilized funding. I’ve heard from a number of parents that that continues to be a phenomenal problem. What they would like to see is the fact that stabilized funding reflects the true costs of what these organizations need to cover in order to keep the lights on, keep the oil in the furnace burning and making sure that the wages of the staff are paid, because quite ultimately, the way the system is built, it’s got an element of base funding and I’ll give it that, but the problem is it’s the top-up based on attendance. Well, if you go to any day home, they want their money up front and if your child misses, your child misses. The fact is, they’ve still got to pay that light bill, they’ve still got to keep the heat on, they’ve still got to pay the staff. And when they stop paying the staff, well, then it’s just sort of a tailspin into destruction. That’s how these places fall apart and how are we really helping then. Then it’s emergency money if we can keep the debtors off. Then we have people who can’t make their rent because they couldn’t get paid and the day home administrator or the early childhood facility had to make choices that they probably didn’t want to make or they didn’t pay the power bill and the power bill company now…

So it’s an endless cycle for these folks. I think if the department will start seeing the way, and I’m convinced they know where the solution is, and I’m providing it if they’re listening, and the solution, I think, is that we provide base funding that’s reflective of cost. It’s the over and above sense of things like the profit that a day home may provide or an early childhood facility would provide. That’s the gap we make them do the extra earning for when it comes to head count. Like Four Plus or the Aboriginal Head Start, we don’t want to tie their funding to unstable, variable circumstances. That’s the biggest trouble we have in life. It seems like, oh, we need to find money. Well, we can never tackle the fixed costs. We can only tackle the variable costs. But it’s like we’re paying these facilities... Like, everything’s based on a variable cost and they

can’t cover their fixed costs the way we’re paying them.

Mr. Chairman, although time is running out -- and I assure the Minister and his very dedicated staff over here that I will raise other issues as we get to the particular pages -- there are two other areas I’d like to quickly touch on. One is arts funding. I try to raise arts from time to time, but, of course, there are always pressing issues that seem to supersede one over another. But I’d certainly like to see our government address the film industry in a way that shows them the respect. I think we’re on our third type of series on national television and this is a phenomenal push forward about what type of market could be opening up here in the Northwest Territories. When they’re filming Ice Pilots, if I have my facts correct that have been forwarded to me, is they’re not using northern people that could be doing the work. I think the diamond in the rough of this opportunity really is that it’s an untapped area. It could be a new area for expansion and a new area of promise when it comes to developing opportunities, developing a new market, getting people working, creating economic interest, whether it’s tourism or whatnot.

Mr. Chairman, I see I only have a couple seconds left on the clock, so I’ll just say that I would like to speak to it later when I have more time about my concern about the transfer of public housing administration back to the housing authority. As I said several weeks ago, I always thought it was an administrative problem that we never fully transferred over and that’s where my view of the issues were. Mr. Chairman, I’ll leave it at that for now and I’ll provide more details as we get to the individual pages. Thank you.