Page 10-24, Education, Culture and Employment, activity summary, advanced education, grants and contributions, contributions, $35.349 million. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I need to ask here under this small community employment contribution, it’s gone down significantly from $339,000 to $160,000. Can I ask why?

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. For that we’ll go to Ms. Eggenhofer.

Thanks for the information. So this Small Community Employment Fund, my understanding is that was established by one of the special committees during the 16th Assembly and I

think this committee was revived in the 17th . Was

this re-profiling of this $400,000 something that the Rural and Remote committee was aware of? Were they consulted before the decision was made to re-profile the money?

That’s good.

Page 10-24, Education, Culture and Employment, activity summary, advanced education, grants and contributions, contributions, $35.349 million.

Page 10-25, Education, Culture and Employment, information item, advanced education, active positions.

Page 10-27, Education, Culture and Employment, activity summary, income security, operations expenditure summary, $41.591 million. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I wanted to say this is a very important program. There are many people throughout the North who need government support because of their personal situations. This division plays a big role. However, based on feedback from constituents and listening to other colleagues, there are still some major issues here. Dignity is still missing in the treatment of income assistance clients on a too frequent basis. I’m not saying all the time, but more than it should be. People, frankly speaking, are treated like they are dirt. This is totally unacceptable. I know it’s unacceptable to the Minister. Our workers are consistently losing client paperwork on a monthly basis to where clients not only have to come in and re-establish it, but they have to learn to photocopy everything, which is not

always an easy thing unless you happen to have a photocopier in your house or some piece of equipment that will serve, and that’s not typically true of many of our income support security clients. Often they have to go back to original sources such as the fuel distributor, the utility, their landlord to get original receipts because of this lost paperwork. Unnecessarily requesting a person is present when there are mobility issues, which engenders expensive taxi rides.

These are some of the issues that I consistently come up with or hear from clients about. I know the Minister has heard these sorts of things and knows what I’m talking about here.

Does this budget include or is the Minister planning a way to really try and make progress on this? I think many of our workers get into the business out of social concerns themselves, and yet somehow, after a period of time, their behaviour changes. Does the Minister see any way to deal with this situation?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. I feel the frustration of the Member and I do get those requests as well. As you know, we are going through some changes and recommendations being brought forward from the office of the Auditor General. That gives us an opportunity to improve our programs. As you know, these are regulations that we follow. It’s part of the Auditor’s report that we have to be stringent and follow our policies in place. There are some areas that we can be somewhat flexible and I’ve instructed my department, when it comes to professionalism, we need to treat everybody with respect.

We’ve conducted, I believe, a couple of workshops and training for CSOs, client service officers. We know it’s a high-demand position. We know it’s a very stressful position to be in. We provide support as best as we can as a department. There are times where one individual is working on a caseload of 30 or 40 at times. It’s a high demand, high stress area. Sometimes they lose their cool but at the same time we remind them they have to be courteous, they have to be professional in the work environment. Due to that, there has been some improvement to ensure those are consistently followed through.

Members have shared their concerns with me and I did follow through with my department to provide training. We’ll continue to do that. This is an area that I am fully familiar with, and again, working within the office of the Auditor General, they reviewed our income support file, as well, and that will be before us soon.

Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate his comments there. I appreciate the focus he’s bringing to this, and I urge him not to stop or slow down. There are issues remaining out there, and I want to acknowledge that not all income assistance officers are like this. I do acknowledge that there are undoubtedly some people taking advantage of the system and that must be very frustrating, but we shouldn’t be making the people that really need our help – for whatever reason, it’s real – they shouldn’t be paying the price here. Thanks to the Minister for that, and I’ll look forward to more on that.

Just one last one. I see utilities have stayed the same as last year. I know the Minister is aware that electricity rates have gone up 7 percent this year and will over the next two years, with another 5 percent the year after that. Obviously, there’s a question here. I think we’ve heard about gasoline rates in Yellowknife and so on and elsewhere in the North. Is there a policy to try and adjust utilities here? Are we talking utilities for income support?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. For that we’ll go to Mr. Devitt.

That’s great news. What would have happened last year with the extra dollars budgeted for utilities? How would they be reallocated? What’s the process there?

That sounds logical. What would it be called? A transfer of funds. Is that different than reallocation?

That’s it, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Moving on with questions I have Ms. Bisaro.