Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, on the needs assessed loans, the answer is yes. On the regular grants, no, the size of the family isn’t always factored in. Again, the Member has raised a good point and it is an area that I have also suggested that we need to take a look at ensuring, particularly for northern students, that we are encouraging those students to attend the college. I think we do need to recognize the higher cost for single parents. I have already asked that we take a look at doing that. I don’t think we need a full-blown commission to do it. I think we have enough expertise...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The amounts are looked at on a regular basis. It’s not a formal review every year. There hasn’t been a formal review of the amounts since I think the year 2000 when we had a commission that did a study and made some recommendations that the government-of-the-day acted on. This year, for instance, we will be increasing the amount of support for tuition; we’ll be increasing the amount of support for books. So it is an area of support that the department looks to whenever we can make the argument successfully for new funds that we add to the program. The cost of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I’ll ensure that the department knows that there needs to be an interpreter/translator available for the meeting and will work to get that done as quickly as possible. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I’d be happy to arrange to have people from the regional office visit the community at a convenient time for both them and the community to have a public discussion about public housing subsidies.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There will be a number of federal dollars coming starting July 1st. Families with children under six will start to receive $100 a month for each child. So, arguably, that is federal money that is coming to the North. That money could easily be used by parents to help resolve financial issues at their day cares. I would expect that day cares would increase their rates to take advantage of the fact that that money is now available to parents. As I said, through the business planning process we’re hoping to be able to increase user subsidies and provide additional funding...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When this issue was first raised and the government was challenged to do a review of all charity leases, that was undertaken by Public Works. The information was brought to Cabinet. At that point, Cabinet decided that we should have a look and have a consistent approach across government for our charity leases. That work is underway and is expected to be completed later this summer. It will be considered at that point by Cabinet, so it is not one department doing one thing and another department doing another. We intend to look and see if there is a consistent...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, first thing we have to do is make sure the existing day care operators are well supported. We know a lot of them are struggling, so we think the first thing we have to do with this money, since it’s one-time money, we can’t count on it being ongoing, in fact, we know for sure it won’t be ongoing money, we were looking for opportunities to help existing day care operators to better survive. If we create new day care spaces without having resolved the ongoing operations concerns, that isn’t helpful in the long run. The Member is right; we need to look for...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The amount of money we are proposing to include in the supplementary appropriation is based on the contribution we got from the federal government last year and that is some $940,000. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not prepared to commit to a full-blown committee to go out and conduct hearings to hear what people think we should be doing with student financial assistance. I’d rather put the money into the program if we could afford that kind of thing. What I will commit to is the Member has raised a good point and that is that we should make sure we are encouraging people to attend our northern college. We have a real investment in the northern campuses and we need to make sure that we are supporting people to go there. I have already directed the department that over the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member knows, we’re in the process of reviewing our income security programs, all of them right now. Over the course of the next six months to a year, yes, we will be looking at all of our programs. But there are some specific aspects of the public housing rental subsidy that we will be looking at definitely in the next six months and one of them is the change in the way that the month is used to determine what your rent is. Previously, the housing associations were using the rent based on, for instance, if you went in on February 28th and said here’s what my...