Alfred Moses

As mentioned, in 2015 a framework was tabled in this House. As we're going out to develop the action plan we do want to continue to get support from our stakeholders, Aboriginal governments, societies that are out there that focus on culture and heritage, as well as our residents of the Northwest Territories who provide that knowledge and experience of where we need to put our focus as well. As I mentioned, we have 33 communities in the Northwest Territories; we want to make sure that all priorities, all areas in terms of culture and heritage are met for the communities, for the Aboriginal...

In 2015, the government of the day tabled a Culture and Heritage Framework. Right now, we're working with all departments to develop an action plan that we will present to the House, and that will focus on some of the priorities. Also looking at all 33 communities and also looking at some of the land claims that are out there in terms of culture and heritage throughout the Northwest Territories here, we're taking the lead, the department is taking the lead in developing that action plan, and we should have something hopefully in the new year brought before committee and before Cabinet and then...

First of all, I just want to thank all the organizations that do set up food banks and provide services in our communities, even our smallest communities. As the Member has said, without their help, we wouldn't be able to get some of these other families that might fall off income assistance based on some of the, I guess, regulations that we impose for people that want to take down income assistance.

But we are doing our job, Mr. Speaker. The changes that we just made to the income assistance and the Canada Child Benefit, as I mentioned earlier, families are going to get an increase of up to...

I believe in 2015-2016 we had about just over $18 million on income assistance that this government provided. In 2016-2017, it went over $20 million, and the odd time we come back to this House asking for a supplementary appropriation. As everybody knows, the economy is in a downturn, so we are seeing more families on income assistance in some of the regions, and from time to time we will come back to the House to seek a supplementary appropriation to provide income assistance to those that are in need.

There are a lot of things that we take into consideration; how big the family is, the net...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When we were moving ahead with the Income Assistance changes, we got recommendations from clients, we got recommendations from our partners in the NGO community. Moving forward, a lot of those included that we no longer claw back income that's intended to help parents with the costs of raising their children.

In order to understand the improvements, I think, to the Income Assistance Program, Members must look at the overall benefit package and not at each item in isolation. As a government, we give a whole suite of programs and services to help families in need, low...

We have a lot of clients that are on the Income Assistance Program. Obviously it's by a case-by-case basis. I've mentioned about the net income of the whole family, how many children are in the house and the ages of those children when we do the assessments. In this case, like I said, it seems very unique and in that case any families that do find themselves in that situation, I encourage them to come talk to the CSOs to find a solution.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It gives me great honour and pleasure to welcome my father, Mr. Winston John Moses, joining us here today. Both he and my mom, Martha, are avid watchers, they rarely miss a -- I want to say an episode -- but a day in the House in sitting when they're watching on TV. I'm glad that he could be here joining us today and taking in the proceedings. So welcome, dad. Thanks.

That's exactly what we're doing with this survey. As I mentioned in this House during this session. We also got a motion that as passed earlier in the week supporting the roll outs of a junior kindergarten and making sure that those surveys that addressed the concerns that are brought forward will be meeting the needs of the school, and we're having our engagements with the schools and the communities to ensure that they have the resources needed to implement junior kindergarten.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and we did see the concerns in the press earlier this week. I can inform the Member that we do have two schools that fall under the Yellowknife Catholic School Boards that offer programs from kindergarten to Grade eight. The school in particular that he's mentioning does have a utilization rate of 79 per cent and at 85 per cent then we start looking at extensions as well as renovations. Now, the other school that they have has a capacity rate of 58 per cent.

We will have conversations with the superintendent how to address those concerns from the Yellowknife Catholic...

The gap in resources, I'd like to hear if it is anything specific. We've been out engaging, we've been hearing the responses that needed to be met. We've addressed those needs and the concerns, but for the gaps I'd like the Member to let me know where they are rather than some of the projected numbers where I actually have some of the actual numbers in front of me. We're still putting that plan together as the motion said earlier this week. So in two days, I don’t think I could get a plan together from what the motion said, but we will have that in time for implementation in 2017-2018.