Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Members are aware, or as they've been notified, we are currently engaging the public and stakeholders on the income assistance program. That engagement ends tomorrow. There have been meetings with Indigenous governments, vendors, former income assistance clients, current income assistance clients, and so on, and once we have that information we will have a "what we heard" report to share with the House and a -- the reprofiled income assistance program that will be the ultimate result of all of this work should roll out in April 2023. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my concern is that it doesn't leave for a lot of time for us to see how the new program is working towards the end of our term. And we've spent a lot of our time over the course of the 19th Assembly identifying changes that different Members would like to see to the income assistance program. A lot of these changes are longstanding challenges that NWT residents have seen for decades. And so I'm wondering why not start with the low hanging fruit or changes to policies that present barriers to getting Northerners housed? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There have been some changes. I mean, everyone now is on the wellness productive choice and so that is essentially been eliminated. That's something that's been asked for. So I want -- I just want to note that there are some things happening but, you know, calling something low hanging fruit doesn't mean it's low hanging fruit. The change the Member's talking about would probably cost millions of dollars, and we're working on that right now to make those determinations. So it's not as easy as just saying let's do something. There's other factors. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think if you have a director, then it would be more consistent than spreading it out perhaps. But the director is a statutory officer of the income assistance program, and the director has given discretion to regional managers and client service officers to issue rental benefits on the behalf of clients.

So in situations where a client doesn't have their name on the public housing waitlist or their rent exceeds the limits that we have on rent, the client service officer has to seek approval from the director but in my experience that happens very quickly. People aren't waiting days or weeks for this to happen. So having that central authority provides the consistency that the Member is talking about, and we don't sacrifice time. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think the Minister and I have differing reports back from people who are using this service and that sometimes days or even a week means that somebody is not housed in that time.

Will the Minister remove the requirement on the income assistance clients to put their names on the public housing waitlist knowing that there's not enough public housing in the NWT and that housing Northerners relies on market rentals, partnerships, and also alternate housing solutions? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If Members are aware of specific issues where people are waiting weeks for a service, please let me know. As part of the income assistance review, I want to make sure that we include some way to track these types of incidents. Until then, if I don't know I don't know. So I think it's the duty of everyone to let me know about that when they hear it because I want to make sure that doesn't happen.

And the comment the Member made about removing the waitlist requirement, we're working on that, as I've said. There's money involved. There's other things involved. But I've heard the Member, and we are considering that as part of the review. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.