Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That’s good. I’m glad that the Minister’s prepared to sit down with committee.

I would like to ask the Minister if he could commit to looking into creating some sort of special status for single mothers and fathers, in their need, to determine a different type of CNIT — Core Need Income Threshold — when the calculations are done. So if the Minister could commit to looking at some sort of special status for this group of people.

I’m interested in the Core Need Income Threshold for public housing. Did I hear correctly that the Minister said the numbers come from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or is there other data that’s used to determine the Core Need Income Threshold?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, numerically they are factored in, but the nature of these costs is not. That is to say, child care expenses would be considered the same as a car payment.

Of course, costs like these represent two completely different circumstances with varying degrees of need. As such, more often than not the applicant’s true discretionary income is not really captured, so a single parent’s eligibility many times falls just over the predetermined Core Need Income Threshold, and they become ineligible for public housing. This is happening all too often to single people who are...

Okay. The total reduction in this area has been $433,000 just in these last three motions. The department had indicated to us that that was offset by the federal government. I’m only seeing an offset of $170,000. To me, it still seems like a fairly substantial cut, so I’m going in favour of the motion.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, too, am strongly in favour of the funding staying in the department for this function.

In the little bit of interaction we’ve had with the Elders’ Justice Committee in Fort Resolution, it was positive for the whole community. They’re playing a positive role. It would be good to see the money remain there. Although I’m not sure that it’s exactly affecting that particular group, I’m sure it will be affecting other groups across the North.

The elders still talk about attending court and seeing first-hand and having a role in how justice is dealt with in a community. I think...

My understanding of reporting PYs is that it is supposed to be by function. I am just trying to determine if all of government reports PYs the same way, or if some departments choose to report PYs in different manners. My understanding is that the North Slave region just happens to be where the location of the corrections facilty is. Also, the Fort Smith region happens to be the location of the other corrections facility, which is based in Hay River. But that is not exclusively responsible for working in the South Slave region or the Forth Smith region only. The North Slave Correctional Centre...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The request by MLA Krutko on the distribution of the money for Community Justice committees and then the response from Minister Lafferty on the federal funding…. I was wondering if it would be possible to indicate that, also in addition to the request from Mr. Krutko, if the federal money, once they have determined where it is going to go…. I am assuming they already know, since they made the cut. In accordance with that, I would like to have the federal funds incorporated into Mr. Krutko’s request also.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to get some more information on the….

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. [English translation not provided.]

During my last constituency visit to Fort Resolution and Lutselk’e many residents were concerned about the lack of industrial arts, home economics and physical education teachers in their school. Aspiring trade students may not pursue journeyman status without getting some experience in those trades. These days with the robust diamond and mining industry, the importance of exposing junior and senior high school students to trades cannot be overemphasized — particularly increasing their employment opportunities, as I mentioned a couple...

I would like to see if the Minister could provide this request, to myself or to the committee in writing, for how they count their headquarters and regional positions. I don’t believe that everybody in all of the departments is reporting regional and headquarter positions in the same manner. This, I think, downloads a lot of headquarter positions into the regions that are actually headquarter functions. There are headquarters positions in other communities. That’s fairly well understood. But every opportunity that the government gets to report them as a regional position, it seems to happen.

I...