R.J. Simpson

. As I mentioned earlier, we have the career and education advisors. What they do is they have those conversations with students, starting at grade 7, so it's not quite as early as the Member is speaking about, but they start letting kids know about their options early on so that those students can then make sure they're taking the right courses to get where they need to be. We also have the SNAP program, which is something that's available all over the territory, although it does take some partnerships; it's not something you can just roll out. There are a number of things like that, and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If someone wants to get into trades, there are a lot of ways to do it, of course. We offer trades courses at Aurora College here. There is more emphasis being put on the trades at the high school level. Our career development, it's a different name. The officials from ECE go into the schools and talk to the students, and tell them about other career opportunities. They are having those conversations with students now, saying that trades is a career that you can get into. That type of work needs to happen more and more. I know, for a long time, trades was sort of a...

The Member has brought this issue to my attention, and the department is going to look into what's happening in the Beaufort-Delta, follow up there, and find out where this information's coming from. A lot of this information is publicly available. I can have it sent to the Member, but there is a plain language handbook online, and there is actually the policy manual used in the offices available online, as well, that has the legislation in there, and the description of how that legislation is interpreted. I can share all of that for the Members because I know, as a Regular Member, especially...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can confirm that there is not a $600 cap for rent payable for Income Assistance clients. There was a cap that was changed back in April of 2018. I think, at that time, the cap for single individuals was $900, but that is long since gone. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

That is something that is supposed to happen, and I will follow up and make sure that that is happening. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

If a client is eligible for Income Assistance, then they are eligible for the rent and other utilities. It's not a commitment I need to make; it's something that's in the legislation currently.

As part of the apprenticeship or ATOC strategy, we've already committed to that, and we're working on that. We hope to launch the program later this year, and it's going to be similar to the ones in Alberta and Nova Scotia, and it's going to be focused on getting more women in trades. There are other partners in the territory, as well; Skills Canada NWT has launched a program aimed at girls in middle school to help them start getting interested in the trades, as well. There are a lot of people who we could be talking to about this. Five percent of the registered apprentices are women. We're...

I wish I could have more positive answers here for the Member, but the fact is we are not considering this. The work that it would take to actually look into this and do the research is not doable, given what we have been mandated to do by this Assembly. Successive governments over the past number of decades have gone through cuts. The people to get cut are the policy people. We are pretty thin on policy positions. It is tough to do a lot of the work that we want to do. I am not even sure how we are going to do the things that we are mandated to do and that this Assembly is asking of us. To...

First, I just want to address the Member's comments. If any Member is aware of incidents where we are not living up to our standards, please let me know. We have a system in place within the actual offices, but I want to work toward a territory-wide tracking system so that we can identify these types of concerns and move to improve them. In terms of indexing, Income Assistance does pay the actual cost of shelter, of utilities, and of heating fuel, so, in that sense, it is indexed. However, at this time, I can't commit to indexing all of the benefits. We look at our mandate, and ECE has a lot...

Mr. Speaker, the transformation of Aurora College into a world-class polytechnic university is well under way. As the Legislative Assembly is aware, the transformation will happen in three phases. We are currently in Phase One, which is what I want to talk about today. Phase One is focused on strengthening the foundation of the existing college, ensuring we understand the detailed steps ahead of us, and determining what we, as a territory, want the polytechnic university to be.

The first step in Phase One was the development of a vision for postsecondary education. This vision was developed...