Alfred Moses

Yes, I'll make the commitment to look into creating a policy moving forward after we do the scan and see the feasibilities of that. Thank you.

I'll take that as a comment. Thank you.

As we went through our business planning review, as well as our main estimates review, and with the regulations, when those go through we're going to see a significant increase to our low to moderate-families, which the Member is bringing forward with the NWT Child Benefits and how we're going to be assessing those and addressing those now. There will be an increase to our families that have low income to moderate income. It's just going to take time, as we have to go through the regulations. We will see those increases as we move forward.

Roughly, it's about $250,000 to $300,000 to both College nordique and also to Dechinta. Thank you.

Yes, as I mentioned in the House when taking questions on this, we're just doing a scan right now to see what other jurisdictions are doing. Member O'Reilly has brought up the Yukon index and we're taking a look at that. We’re looking at what other jurisdictions are doing. As I said, we review yearly. We always want to make sure our programs and services are adequate enough to support those that need it, but we're just doing a scan right now to see what policies are out there. The Yukon has been brought up and we're taking a look at that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think the changes that we did are seen because of the enrolment changes that we had throughout the Northwest Territories, and in some cases, there also being a decrease in students as well. Thank you.

As I mentioned, the Mangilaluk School is on our priority list. We did go and do a needs assessment of the school. What we're looking at proposing is an additional 1,000 square metres in order to respond with our capital standards and criteria for NWT schools. We're also looking at upgrading to existing program areas to accommodate current program requirements and also do a mid-life technical retrofit that'll include an energy-efficient exterior building envelope.

As everything that comes through the government, whether it's hospitals, schools, roads, it does have to go through a capital budget...

Not at this time. During the review of the main estimates, but we can get that within the next couple days for sure, if not tomorrow.

Yes, and I appreciate the Member bringing up questions in terms of retroactive pay and whether the GNWT can focus that on their own in terms of funding as questions were in the House earlier today, and last time we did the income assistance increase was April 1st, 2015. The increase was about 20 per cent. Currently, our government doesn't have any policy to reflect changes in income assistance. We review on a case-by-case basis. To get to a couple of the other details, I will ask my deputy minister to get into a bit more details of the program and where we can see some real changes. As I...

Yes. I know we have the NWT association as well as the education authorities that have representatives under the collective agreement as well when we are looking at those areas as well. I will go to my deputy minister for more detail. It is right across the territory in terms of how the teachers are being funded. But the benefits, all those areas, we did give a brief presentation to committee in some of the ways we are going to be looking at fixing some of that, the way we fund our teachers. I will go to my deputy minister for more detail. Thank you.