Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can appreciate the Minister of Education has only been in the portfolio a short while. I would like to ask him this question regarding student financial assistance.

While he has only been the Minister for a short while, I am sure we can agree that he was on the Government Operations Committee for much a longer time. I am going to ask the Minister to recollect a little bit here.

Last year, the Department of Education presented the Government Operations Committee with two proposals for student financial assistance revision.

They were known internally as Plan A and Plan B. I think everybody in this room is aware of Plan A and Plan B, so, we can stop pretending we do not know about them. I believe Mr. Ootes was a Member of the committee, which vehemently recommended the government look at and adopt Plan A as the most equitable solution. Can he confirm or deny that? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That is reassuring, but I am wondering if the Minister can tell us; will these regulations be in place soon or, more specifically, when will these regulations be in place? I am concerned about students going away to school in the fall, so I would like to see this done as quickly as possible.

The question is when will the regulations be in place? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, that is correct.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment questions on the Student Financial Assistance Program. I am not sure that the average Northerner or student understands that the details of what the student will actually receive are contained in regulation instead of legislation.

The bill which the government will propose today will make amendments to the Student Financial Assistance Act and will deal with raising the amount of money available in the loan fund and increasing the lifetime limit on the amount each individual can borrow. Mr. Speaker, I am sure that you can appreciate that students are more concerned with how much they will receive for student financial assistance rather than how we tweak our legislation.

My question for the Minister, Mr. Speaker, is whether the Minister will commit to tabling the proposed regulations now that the amendments to the Student Financial Assistance Act have been introduced. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to talk today about student financial assistance, as this is something that is near and dear to my heart. I have raised this issue in this House before.

As many of my colleagues know, I attended high school in Yellowknife and went on to university in the south. I have to say that the student financial assistance, from an administrative point of view, has certainly improved. I remember the first time I applied for student financial assistance, I had great difficulty. It was very confusing. I believe things have improved.

But as I mentioned previously in this House, unfortunately, tuitions at southern institutions have doubled, and sometimes tripled, over the last 10 years. The rates for student financial assistance in the Northwest Territories are the same as they were when I was going to school. This is no longer acceptable. We do not have a positive situation when we are expecting kids to make do with less.

We can all agree the current situation is unacceptable. We have in front of us the government rolling out some new legislation which proposes to make changes to student financial assistance. It looks very good on the surface. But I am hoping we can dig more deeply here today and discover exactly what this government is rolling out. I know the former government was presented with a couple of different approaches, and they chose to support a different approach than this government is currently bringing before it. I would like to discuss the two different approaches, see which was the more equitable of the approaches, and see if we cannot talk about that.

I know we sometimes choose to support things we think we can find the political support for. But I think that is just a euphemism for the road of least resistance. I really do not think that is in the best interest of students of the Northwest Territories. I am going to be asking the Minister responsible for Education some questions about this later today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank the Minister for looking into this, and I am wondering if he can give me his commitment that he will make this a top priority and work to make sure that youth is a priority and a priority quickly. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That is disappointing. I know that there are various programs scattered across government that involves youth. I am wondering if the Minister would have some approach for consolidating some of these programs under the portfolio? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Minister responsible for Youth. I would just like to say that I would like to applaud the government for having a youth portfolio. I think that this is something that is very important, and it is nice to see the government go in this direction. Can the Minister tell me what the budget for the portfolio of youth is? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am wondering if the Premier can tell us whether DIAND has given us any indication at this early stage of the timeline for the cleanup process? And also the cost of the process and whether or not that will cost the taxpayers of the Northwest Territories? Thank you.