Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. As I mentioned in my statement, the NWT Child Benefit is not helpful to the low-income family of four that we surveyed for our living wage calculation. Their income, which is for the two of them for the year, $92,518, qualifies them for just $14 a year from the NWT Child Benefit, but the intention of this benefit, the Minister told us, is to help working families with their expenses. My question is: will the Minister revisit and revise the income threshold for the NWT Child Benefit? Mahsi.

Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and as the Member has mentioned, it is not only the NWT Child Benefit that we made improvements to and changes to with our income assistance benefits that exempted income intended to help with the costs of raising children, but we also looked at the child support payments. That was further to the work that we did with the Canada Child Benefit, and we made changes there.

I can assure the Member that any individuals and families in the Northwest Territories who are unable to meet their basic financial needs can also access assistance through GNWT social programming, and we offer those programs to the families. Seeing that this is still new, we are still going to have to look at doing the report and looking at monitoring this program moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the Minister for his response, but I believe he has missed point of the living wage. The point of the living wage is that people work full-time to take care of themselves and their families out of their employment income. They don't need food banks. They don't need public housing. They need to earn a decent wage so that they can pay their way.

To that end, the NWT Child Benefit could be very helpful to working families. That is the reason that I am interested in knowing whether the Minister will look at revising the income threshold to make it more useful to low-income families.

The Member mentioned the living wage. The living wage reflects what earners need to bring home to live an acceptable quality of life. I just want to inform Members and the public that there is no jurisdiction in Canada currently that has legislated a living wage as part of its minimum wage policy.

As a government, collectively with Housing, Health, my Department of Education, Culture and Employment, we do provide a lot of services to help low- to modest-income families, and we continue to look at doing those supports. As I mentioned, we are really in our first year of the NWT Child Benefit. I will go back to the department and have those discussions in terms of how the evaluation of the NWT Child Benefit was in its first year, and we have not had a complete first year yet.

I appreciate the Minister's willingness to go back and look. For what it is worth, the income threshold is also too low for the Canada Child Benefit. Mr. Speaker, the point of the living wage is not to ask government to legislate the living wage, but rather it is to encourage employers to see the benefits for themselves of paying a living wage in order to recruit and retain and encourage greater productivity from their work force. We are not looking for legislation of the living wage.

I want to talk about how the cost of living has been gone up in the last two years; 5 per cent each for shelter and childcare, 6 per cent for food. Is there any thought about indexing this benefit to inflation?

Setting minimum wage to increase with inflation could limit our ability to explore other options for adjusting the minimum wage rate. We do have a Minimum Wage Committee that does a lot of work on behalf of the government and brings back options. They do that every two years. As you know, NWT CTR rates are based on Yellowknife. If there were any links to that, it would adversely affect some of our more northern and more isolated communities that do even have a higher cost of living, if we looked at doing something with that as it is based on costs here in Yellowknife.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm sorry, I didn't make my question more clear to the Minister. I am not asking him to index the minimum wage. The methodology for calculating minimum wage is something entirely different than calculating the living wage. What I'm asking him to do is index the NWT Child Benefit. Is that possible? Thank you.

Not at this time. As I said, we are in our first year of the NWT Child Benefit. We need to look at the evaluations, look how this has affected our families right across the Northwest Territories. As I mentioned, any families or individuals who do need that extra support for the basic needs, our government is always there to support and help and provide the most basic needs for our families across the NWT, and we will continue to do so. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, if you pay attention to the news, it seems like major drug busts have become common place in the NWT. Despite the hard work of the RCMP, the market here is so robust that there appears to be no shortage of money to be made. In addition to the social problems that the drug trade brings, it also brings a lot of Southerners, many of whom have ties to gangs and organized crime. What happens to these people? When they are arrested, they are put into the North Slave Correctional Complex in remand along with the general population. What I am concerned about is because what's happening is we are putting a lot of our young troubled youth. If you are in your 20s, you are still a youth. You are putting them in a remand unit with hard criminals and gang members, and correctional centres are proven to be excellent recruiting ground for gangs. A lot of these Southerners bring the mentality, a level of violence that isn't traditionally seen in northern correctional centres.

I would like to ask the Minister, because this is a relatively new problem compared to other places, it is not out of control yet. Does the Department of Justice have any sort of policy in place to deal with the influx of gangs into the correctional system in the Northwest Territories?

Masi. Minister of Justice.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can advise that Corrections is aware of this problem which the Member opposite has alluded to. I can advise that gang awareness is covered for new recruits in the Corrections training program, so staff are aware of the problem involving gangs; they are able to identify and deal, hopefully, with those issues. Thank you.

Maybe I will look for some more details in a minute, but I'd like to know: does the department do anything to basically get the gang members out of the territory? Maybe send them back to their home jurisdiction, or to a correctional facility that might be better able to handle them?

I can advise that those on remand, which would cover many of the gang members who are in the facility, people on remand are held in the jurisdiction in which the offence has occurred. Now, once they're sentenced, particularly if they are sentenced to a federal term of incarceration, they are generally sent south, but we can't do that with remands.

I read the news. I see a lot of these people who are arrested from the South. They are on probation. They have other charges. If they are importing pounds of cocaine and firearms, they are looking at significant time.

What they do is they try and do as much time as they can at North Slave because it's easier time than doing it at Bowden or something. What has the department done to look into sending them back? I know he says we can't send them out of the jurisdiction, but have they tried? Have they tried anything?

As I mentioned previously, those alleged gang members really fall into two categories. Those who are on remand, we don't have the ability to send them back to the jurisdictions from which they came.

Also, too, that would be difficult financially. For example, they might have many court appearances, and if they were sent back, say, to Ontario, then we would have to bring them back at our cost each time they appeared in court. However, once they are sentenced, and often they do receive lengthy sentences, many of these gang members are charged with narcotics offences, and sentences have been increasing in that area. Once they receive a sentence, if it is a federal offence, that is, two years or more, my understanding is most of them are sent back to penitentiaries in the South.

I guess when they are identified as having gang affiliation in remand, are they separated from the general population, or are they left with people who are in there, maybe just because they have addiction issues?

The staff manages the inmate population based on risks, security, and safety to inmates. In some cases when inmates, gang members or otherwise, become dangerous, have a security concern, or are dangerous to other inmates, they can be housed outside the general population in the same facility.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am interested in this topic because I think we are at a point where we can stop this from getting worse like we have seen elsewhere. I would ask the Minister: would he be able to share the department's policy with me so I can have a look at what they are doing to deal with this gang issue? Thank you.

I will speak with corrections, and if there is a written policy regarding gang awareness, I will ask them whether they will be prepared to share that with the Member opposite. Thank you.