Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As per my Member's statement earlier today, why are students in Range Lake being told that they have to pay late fees and other costs through no fault of their own due to the department's lateness in getting payments out the door to kids on SFA? Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Range Lake. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to start by acknowledging that this certainly would be very frustrating and difficult on the part of students who are really wanting to ensure that they're focusing on their post-secondary studies. As the Member mentioned, student financial assistance has seen an increase in their applications this year. There's been an almost 20 percent increase in the number of applications for student financial assistance that have come through to the government, and even though the Department of Education, Culture and Employment did hire five additional staff in order to take on some of this increase in applications, we have still seen delays in processing those applications this fall. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that bottleneck has been cleared. That's what I've heard. But the issue -- the question I asked was will the Minister pay for those late fees. Students shouldn't have to shoulder that burden because of a capacity issue. So I'll ask it again because the Minister didn't answer it: Will the Minister direct the department to pay the late fees and costs associated with these late payments for our students? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Member for bringing back the question. Mr. Speaker, there is currently, to be quite frank, no mechanism for education, culture and employment to pay for those fees. The way that this program is structured is to pay a portion of a student's post-secondary costs but not the entirety of the cost of their post-secondary education. And so the theory there is that as soon as their student financial assistance would come in that would reimburse some of their savings that they had to also pay for their student -- or sorry, for their tuition costs. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Final supplementary. Member from Range Lake.
Mr. Speaker, this program, I think, is all nestled under income assistance. When income assistance is late for -- has late fees related to power, they pay it. So I don't understand. We have a mechanism for that. Will the Minister use the same mechanism she uses for income assistance at the departmental level to pay these late fees and take the burden off of our learners? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, while they are still both under the same division, they do have different purposes, they do have different design. Income assistance is a program that is structured around the basic needs of residents who would not necessarily have a mechanism to pay those late fees because education, culture and employment is funding them based on their entirety of their basic needs whereas student financial assistance is structured differently and also does have an expectation that students contribute to their post-secondary costs as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Oral questions. Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
