Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions for the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation or I'm not sure if the Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment. Just with the universal partnership agreements that are old, that are agreements between the LHOs and the NWT Housing Corporation. In these agreements, since the transfer to ECE for the Rental Subsidy Program and all the other 15 subsidy programs that ECE works with, there are no agreements, there's no mention in these universal partnership agreements that have the responsibilities and reporting requirements of each department and LHO involved, there's no mention of ECE in these reporting or these partnership agreements. So I'm just wondering when the NWT Housing Corporation was planning on updating and putting out some relevant documents outlining everybody's roles and responsibilities in public housing and the delivery of rent subsidy programs to public housing clients. Is ECE going to be included in these universal partnership agreements? Are we going to revamp the whole thing? What are we going to do? Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I just want to draw some public attention to next week, March 22nd, being designated as the World Water Day by the United Nations General Assembly back in 1992. Mr. Speaker, the World Water Day is an international day of observance and action to draw attention to the plight of the more than one billion, or 20 percent, of the people worldwide who lack access to clean, safe drinking water, something many northerners cannot relate to due to the fact that we are surrounded by thousands of clear lakes and clear rivers.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to mention some simple but maybe even quite disturbing facts that we don't hear too much about here in the NWT with respect to water. Mr. Speaker, the lack of safe, clean drinking water is estimated to kill approximately 4,500 children per day. That is one every 14 seconds, Mr. Speaker. Ten kids will die even before I finish my Member's statement, and 120 before we all finish our Members' statements, Mr. Speaker. That is pretty disturbing to me. Mr. Speaker, the problem is not confined to any particular region of the planet. It is a worldwide issue. Although the task of addressing such a huge issue may seem quite daunting to many who may want to get involved, the modest actions of many individuals can make an extraordinary difference. So I encourage everyone to mark your calendars and go out and show your support on March 22nd to the organizations and the NGOs that are working towards developing a unified approach to addressing the disappearance of our safe, clean drinking water that condemns billions of people to a perpetual struggle for survival every day. So on March 22nd I encourage everyone to go out and make your difference. Thank you.

---Applause

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I am standing up and won't be supporting this amendment to the motion just simply due to the fact that it was agreed to by all stakeholders in January that the caribou are in dramatic decline. How dramatic? It is not for us to debate here today. That is in the courts right now, the methodology and how dramatic it is. That is for them to figure out in the courts. Today, we know that they are in decline. Everybody has agreed to it. So let's just move on and get this motion carried through so that people here can rest assured that this government really does care about the caribou and the fact that it is declining, and we need to take some action right now and not argue about how we are going to count them over again. Thank you.

---Applause

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I also rise in support of this work of the Inuvik Caribou Summit workshop that was held there in January. We've heard it all before, we see it all in the news, and we hear it here in the House just about every day all the caribou crisis that the NWT's going through and all the pressures that the caribou are feeling from development, climate change, and even from just harvesters in general, whether they be aboriginal or non-aboriginal. I think that this motion definitely is demanding some action from this government, but also we have to expect action from everybody here in the NWT that harvests caribou, that uses caribou, and lives with caribou, Mr. Speaker. It's with these people where the action has to start. We have to start right at the grassroots to the people who depend highly on caribou as a means of curbing the high cost of living here in the NWT, and helping their families survive with the high price of beef and other meat here in the NWT. We need caribou and we need our fish in order to carry forward as a people that thrive here in the NWT with the challenges that we have.

I think this motion definitely speaks to the fact that the regulatory processes and jurisdictions that this government works with the co-management boards on these caribou declining numbers is something that we have to really be supportive of regardless of what decisions these co-management boards come out with. We all have to stand behind them because obviously those co-management boards are speaking for the people that are most greatly affected by their decision that they're going to make, and whatever they're going to have to live with, I'm sure other people here in the NWT will be able to live with just as easy, because they're going to be taking the brunt of whatever decision that they're going to come down with and it's going to affect the people that they're making that decision for and in conjunction with.

So I fully support this motion that the honourable Mr. Braden brought forward here with Mr. Pokiak, that action -- and it starts right out there on the land -- Mr. Speaker, with everybody who's out there hunting right now. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there today and all winter and they're harvesting caribou as we speak. I just hope that with their actions out there, that they fully respect and endorse whatever the co-management boards come around and the decision that they have to live with, we're all going to have to live with it. I hope that we don't see anything like this coming around for the next 20 or 30 years that we're going to have to address again. I hope we can do it right this time and then we wouldn't have to come up with the crisis situation like we do today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't know. I'm not talking about a whole bunch of people here, Mr. Speaker. Our student financial assistance programs do provide support to about 1,500 students from the NWT. I'm just wondering, you know, if there's a student who we know whose family is definitely living here in the NWT, they've been here for generations and they don't plan on going anywhere, but they have a student down south who's attended, finished their Grade 12, graduated. Maybe they might not have graduated here in the NWT, but they did succeed in graduating and they're trying to get into college now, but they just don't have the financial backing that they would like here that they could receive here in the NWT. Is there any kind of alternative program here in the student financial assistance portfolio that would be able to top up, like the Minister likes to refer to, top up their out-of-province student financial assistance to NWT levels? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Nobody's arguing the graduation rates and that's great. I know I even have some of my nephews have gone down south to private schools also just because of their social structure and it helps them to complete their high school and stuff. I just want to know what a simple adjustment here in the policy and procedures manuals would entail here. You know, to be considered. It says ordinarily a resident here in the NWT. I just want to know if they could just change it to something like ordinarily a resident, which is what these students are because they do come back in the summers and they're going to come back here and work every summer while they're in college. So can we tweak this eligibility requirement that would umbrella, I guess, all these other students that are down south? Can we do something like that, Mr. Speaker? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The level of assistance, I guess, is another issue that we can talk about at a different time, but even though you are only a resident of Alberta for 12 months you are not entitled to as much student financial assistance as what you would be entitled to here in the NWT should you have been a resident here. I just want to know if we are going to get more and more students, with the better transportation mode, better able to move people around, students around in the NWT, there's going to be more students that will be going to private schools down in the South to finish off their high school diplomas, and I think the numbers are going to be going up because people are going to be seeing some success in that. These people want to come back to the NWT, move back to their communities and work for their people here in the NWT. How can our student financial assistance ensure that these students won't be struggling down in some place where they don't have any programs or eligibility requirements, if there's nothing like that? How can we help them from the NWT standpoint, Mr. Speaker?

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment just about the student financial assistance policies and procedures. Mr. Speaker, I have received some inquiries from constituents of mine whose kids have been residents of the NWT pretty much most of their lives, have gone to school here pretty much 11 of the

12 years that they did go to school. They chose to go out of province to complete their high school because of peer pressure, because of social pressures that they were receiving, and they actually did go down and graduate. These people have graduated, they have applied for university and college, and they have been accepted, but they've been rejected by our student financial assistance because they have not resided continuously for the past 12 months in the NWT. That's in the policy here, Mr. Speaker, that would make you eligible for 12 continuous months before start of program. I want to know what the Department of Education can do for these students who are ordinarily residents of the NWT, but chose to live the last 12 months, complete their high school, enrol in post-secondary education, but be refused student financial assistance. How can we help those students, Mr. Speaker? Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize a member of the Fort Resolution Seniors' Society, the president of the Native Women's Association of the NWT, my mother, Ms. Terry Villeneuve. Welcome.

---Applause