Alfred Moses

The department has already done work in terms of how much a new campus would cost. If we are looking to do a new planning study, that has to go through the capital budget as well. Money needs to go in to develop the schematic design. Moving forward, as I mentioned, we are not going to know what kind of space is needed until we see what that strategic plan looks like. We are waiting for that to be completed before we make any decisions that are going to cost this government and the taxpayers millions of dollars.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; we were just awarded the contract for the work to be done. We are going to be engaging a lot of our stakeholders. It is a key priority of our department to make sure that we are working very well with Aurora College to develop the strategic plan. We are going to reach out to community governments, Aboriginal governments, GNWT departments, staff, students, as well as Members. As this has just started up, once we get a timeline and schedule, we will share that with the Members and get their feedback and input into this action plan. Thank you, Mr...

We work it on a casebycase basis, Mr. Speaker, and we try to inform our seniors to try to lengthen out their fuel subsidies throughout the winter months. But, because some of the concerns that were brought up at the end of last winter with some of our seniors that were running out of fuel for their homes under this program, that's why we're doing the review and we're going to be looking at threshold levels, we're going to be looking at the zones. Hopefully, it'll address that need so that seniors won't run out of fuel during the winter months. As I said, we should have that review ready by the...

We should have something early on in the New Year. If anything, by the end of this fiscal year, we should have something ready to present to committee and share with all members of the Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Various ways, Mr. Speaker, radio ads, newspaper ads, we ask our MLAs to go out and promote it. Recently, we've been going out doing a lot of community meetings. We were just in Nahendeh. Every meeting that we went to we talked about the Senior Home Heating Subsidy. A lot of seniors that come to our open houses, we bring that up as well. We get our staff to promote as well in the communities so that seniors who are accessing the program, they can let other seniors know about what's available to them.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There was just one change actually, and that was to clarify that seniors who maintain a residential land lease with the Department of Lands were eligible for the subsidy. What I want to maybe inform the Member is that we're actually going through a review, and we did get a lot of concerns from almost all the Members during our sitting earlier this year about the threshold levels, the amount of fuel that elders can receive. As the temperature drops below zero throughout the North, we want to make sure that this program is providing the best services to those in need, the...

Currently, we have three zones throughout the Northwest Territories, to get the maximum threshold for each zone, for Zone 1 is just over $46,000; Zone 3 is high as $56,000, and those are in the more rural and remote communities and the communities in the high Arctic, and those are what we're looking at, whether or not we need to change those so that more seniors can access the program and have fuel and heat up their homes throughout the full winter months.

We had 513 NWT seniors access the program last year. I believe 230 seniors used their full fuel allocation, not all the seniors use up what they're entitled to. As I said, we're reviewing the program so that those 230 seniors who've actually used up their fuel allocation might have some months where they need that fuel for the rest of the winter months. We're going to be looking at those threshold levels.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to welcome Mr. Clarence Wood, long-time councillor for the Town of Inuvik, also His Worship Mayor Heyck, as well as a couple other leaders who have paved the way for us, Mr. Charlie Furlong and Ray Ruben. I'd also like to welcome my cousin William Greenland joining us here again today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document entitled "Annual Report on Official Languages 2015-2016." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.