Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps that’s something we can discuss over supper sometime.

My last question is: will the Minister commit to an early identification of summer student positions within ENR and make sure that’s publicly posted so that students can address specifically with those positions in mind and underscore the credentials that they have for them? Thank you. I like dessert, too.

There is still a chair available for the dinner tomorrow night with Mr. Beaulieu, so the Member for Weledeh is welcome to attend. Yes, I will make that commitment.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I have questions for the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation along the same lines as summer students. Last year the NWT Housing

Corporation hired seven students. To date how many students does the NWT Housing Corporation have on staff for the summer?

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Currently we have three. That’s not including what students the LHOs themselves might take on, which will probably bring the number a lot higher.

To the LHOs, did the Housing Corporation provide additional funding to LHOs for them to hire students at most if not all of the LHOs across the territory?

The LHOs identify how many students they would need and they’ve become very good at trying to access any pots of money that are out there to assist them with paying the wages for students. They’re able to make that determination and determine how many students they would need for the summer and they would find the financing.

The nature of the Housing Corporation is that they spend a lot of their funding on capital. Would the Housing Corporation look at hiring summer students as they’re doing capital projects throughout the summer?

The actual construction of the units or the capital projects that we’re putting up during the summer are usually contracted out. It would be up to the contractors to determine if they needed summer students. They would make that decision and there’s a lot of factors they would have to look at; obviously, the amount of training they have, safety, and all that. It would be up to the contractors to make that decision.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the capital projects that are not specifically under contract but other capital projects like maybe repairs or maintenance programs for homeowners and so on where there may be materials going to the communities and some sort of contribution, would the Minister look at something like that, making contributions to the communities using capital dollars so that the communities could have some summer students working on projects?

Again, if we are doing small capital projects that go out to the communities, even the smallest contracts are usually tendered out or sole sourced. It again would be up to the person doing the work as to whether they have or would need any summer students.

I do know that some of the LHOs will use summer students in some of the projects that they’re doing.

That would be a determination that the LHO would make and, again, they would be able to finance that internally.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of MACA. Given the community of youth and the nature of the department, it might be good to see what the Minister is willing to hire students in the communities. The department, going back through the Summer Student Employment Program from last year to this year, there’s only six students being hired. Is there any increase to the number of students being hired in the communities in the Territories?

Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Robert McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We currently have six summer students within the department. In some of the smaller communities, the recreation department in the community would use some of the money from MACA to bring on one or two summer students. If we were to take into consideration all the different agencies and delivering agents for some of the departments -- MACA or housing -- then we’d find that our summer student numbers would go up. The communities themselves would be able to try and access monies to bring on a summer student.

When the departments start planning on hiring summer students for the summer work season, how much money is the department giving to each community?

We make a contribution to each community. I think last year we made the contribution of $825,000 to the recreation in each community. We have it broken down by the communities. If they’re wanting to they’re able to use that money to… I mean, again, it would be the decision of the community. We can’t tell them how specifically to spend it. Through the committee of Rural and Remote Communities I believe we had identified some money that we wanted to funnel into the communities to help the communities with creating some employment that would obviously include summer students.

Although we’d obviously like to see increases in hires, would the Minister commit to hiring at least six summer students and try to double it to 12 this summer at Municipal and Community Affairs?

The departments within MACA have come back and said, well, they’ve funded for six students and this is what we’ve identified now. I think there’s an opportunity here for maybe all of us as MLAs to bring on a summer student. That would be an additional 19 summer students that we could potentially hire for two or three months. That’s something that we should consider.

In this day and age we have a lot of students that are out there looking for summer employment. I think it’s incumbent on us as Members, as departments, as all the delivering agents in the communities, the communities themselves, to see how many of these summer students we can put to work so as to be able to gather up some money for going back to school next year.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to direct my questions on this topic today to the Premier, the Minister responsible for the Executive and for the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations. The Department of Executive and DAAIR hired two summer students last year. To date how many students have been hired for this year?

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.