EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
I know one of the things that also was a bone of contention the last time around was that the DEAs didn’t feel and other stakeholders didn’t feel that they were given an opportunity or an explanation to what types of changes were being made and why they were being made to the Act.
I know the minister will more than likely agree, sometimes you make changes for whatever reason, not everyone’s going to be happy with those changes but at least they have the courtesy to let them know what it is and why, those changes were made.
So I guess we know would the minister commit to ensuring that this time around that process has been gone through with the stakeholders so that they are aware what changes the department is making to the Education Act, and why those changes were made.
Will he commit to doing that?
Not only do I commit to doing it, I have been doing it. I met with the DEA coalition at least twice in the last six months.
I’ve had an opportunity to have met with every local DEA, had three different regional meetings within the last two and a half years, and the DEA coalition is also involved in part of the working group when we are developing those, not only the language for the Education Act but getting their input on some of the policy and other issues that we’re trying to implement and integrate into the piece of legislation.
Mr. Tootoo: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, That’s good to hear that things are learned from past mistakes, because as I indicated in my opening comments, last time around the DEAs were all sent a copy of a draft piece of legislation, and were asked to let the department know what they thought about it and they had a couple of weeks to get it done.
You know, that time when we were having public hearings in Cambridge Bay and we met with the mayor and council at the time there, and they just said that, we don’t, this is a volunteer board, we don’t have the time to sit down in two weeks to be able to go through a piece of legislation and adequately respond to it.
So I think that using that process throughout will get a lot more buy in and comfort from the stakeholders, and hopefully help things progress a little better than they did last time.
The minister indicated he had some meetings with the DEA Coalition. He’s mentioned also there is a steering committee.
I’m just wondering if he could give us just a general indication, or an idea of what the relationship is between the coalition and the steering committee is.
First of all, let me tell you, again, I’ll try and keep my answer short for the benefit of the members.
The steering committee and the DEA Coalition, the DEA Coalition is the representative body of the DEAs across Nunavut.
The members may remember when I met with them almost a year ago now, last spring, I suggested at that time that here’s an opportunity if we could get representatives of the DEAs to sit together as a smaller group, so that we could have individual meetings.
And then they could facilitate information being received out to the member DEAs; they were in agreement with that. And that’s where the DEA Coalition came forward.
So the DEA Coalition works as if it were as an advisory group to bounce ideas off. As the member indicated earlier, they’re not always pleased with everything that we’ve brought forward. We can’t please every group, or whatever, but we’re trying to do the best we can to get that type of consensus.
The steering committee, again, consists of interdepartmental staff, NTI people, as well as DEA members. Again, there’s another group that is affiliated with the coalition that has the DEA members but we also have, for example, NTI and some of the regional organizations on them. That group, again, we use as a conduit to develop policy ideas on some of the areas that we’ve heard from different areas on the Education Act to try to get a consensus.
So there’s a cooperative model between both groups and the Department of Education, and I would suggest NTI.
Education Summary. Directorate.
I may give you ten minutes for your questions. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to use all of it.
Next speaker is Mr. Peterson.
I hope you weren’t directing that warning at me. I would like to welcome the minister and his officials to the House.
I want to follow up on a line of questioning that my colleague, Mr. Alagalak, had earlier about homelessness in Nunavut. The minister mentioned a different category the definitions of homelessness, and I think I heard him say absolute homelessness, relative homelessness, and hidden homelessness. Could the minister clarify, there are those three categories of homelessness; are there any other categories of homelessness in Nunavut?
I think those questions were answered earlier but I will let Minister Picco decide on it. Minister Picco.
Just for Mr. Arvaluk, again, earlier on the question he had asked on me on 100 credits; the student needs 100 credits and I gave the major core courses, for example, that usually need to be passed to graduate grade 12. So that’s for Mr. Arvaluk’s information.
It’s actually very interesting, there are two designations that the federal government and homelessness advocates use to illustrate the categories of homelessness: absolute homelessness and relative homelessness.
Absolute homelessness is what you see in the southern cities, for example, in Ottawa, in Winnipeg, and in Toronto where people are living in sleeping bags on the streets and so on.
What we have in Nunavut, which is no less more shocking, or no less more important is relative homelessness and that’s because in Nunavut, if you are homeless and you’re on the streets you are going to freeze to death. In Nunavut relative homelessness means when you have 10, or 12, or 13 people in a three-bedroom house sleeping in shifts and so on.
In Iqaluit we actually have absolute homelessness and it’s the only community we have actually identified where we actually have absolute homelessness.
We have a shelter here that is full every night and we’ve actually enlarged the shelter, as the members know, from about 12 beds to 25 beds, which is almost full every night. As the community continues to grow, we have more and more people who fall through the cracks and are marginalized in society.
There are different reasons for being homeless, as the members know.
So hopefully that helps answer the member’s question on the definition of absolute homelessness and relative homelessness.
I thank the minister for that answer. I knew those two definitions but the minister also used another word called hidden homelessness when he was responding to my colleague.
So I was hoping for some clarification here, hidden may actually mean relative homelessness.
I wonder if the minister could tell us, as the part of Homelessness Secretariat, have they collected data on the absolute and relative homelessness figures by community in Nunavut?
When I say hidden homelessness, I was talking in relative terms again to the relative homeless situation in Nunavut, where homelessness is really hidden because we don’t see, maybe in a given community Clyde River, or Pond Inlet, or wherever the community may be there may be hidden homeless because you wouldn’t see them on the streets.
Nationally they would be considered relative but in Nunavut we know they’re hidden because of overcrowding in the houses and so on.
Studies on homelessness have been done in the past two years specific to specific groups.
We help fund the Harvest Society in Cape Dorset to look at the issue of homelessness in their community specifically and right now as I said earlier we are involved in a process with the YWCA and the Baffin Regional Agvik Society and looking at specific issues around homelessness for women.
When we were dealing with the Nunavut Housing Corporation we learned that they are over 3,000 houses short in Nunavut and that number is growing yearly.
If we use their figure that they used for the average 3.96 persons per household, we are 3,500 houses short and if you multiply those two numbers that’s a lot of relative homelessness in Nunavut.
I know when the government goes to Ottawa and talks about the housing crisis in Nunavut they use the terminology, overcrowding, which means one thing to one group of people but to other people it means nothing.
Homelessness has a more significant meaning if you are lobbying in Ottawa and I think the Homelessness Secretariat and the Nunavut Housing Corporation should get together and discuss the terminology that they use to lobby in Ottawa for housing.
I have constituents in my riding, as I mentioned the other day, 15 people in one house but six of them are living in one room, that’s an entire family, and they could be living there for years.
I wouldn’t call that overcrowding, I would say they are homeless in Nunavut and that’s definitely not acceptable to us here in Nunavut.
We need some help from Ottawa.
I know you are putting $200,000 worth of resources towards the Homelessness Secretariat and I think in the view of the numbers I’m coming up with here just by simple calculations using the information you provided me, it seems like it’s a crisis situation of epic proportions.
That has to be dealt with; we can’t hesitate any longer to deal with homelessness and the absolute homelessness in Nunavut.
I’m wondering, Mr. Chairman, if the minister can comment on my suggestions.
I agree with the statement made by the member.
I think it’s important to point out what we all know, and we have been successful as a government, in receiving funding for 700 new social housing units to be built over the next three years.
Those public houses will help alleviate some of the issues that the member is talking about.
At the same time the Nunavut Housing Corporation works to advocate on behalf and for the erection of new units and houses and so on.
What the Homeless Secretariat has been trying to accomplish is to deal with the people who have issues around the absolute homelessness in Nunavut and I think there is good cooperation and work between the two groups and when we have gone to Ottawa we have used the same message.  Again, we have been very successful on accessing the Supporting Community Partnerships Initiative Program that is in place by the federal government to deal with some of the issues that are around homelessness.
Before we go on, before we go on, I’d like to take a 20-minute break.
>>Committee recessed at 15:10 and resumed at 15:46
I still have two more names on my list.
Mr. Curley: Thank you, for your reminder.
It won’t be ten minutes.
I like that in the Directorate where at least it has the responsibility for standards and at least consistency with the policies, and so on, for the department. I also hope too that you’re the minister who can regulate certain guidelines to the local DEAs.
I want to ask you minister, and I raise it again once, it has to do with the weather policy. The weather policy, I believe, is set by the local DEAs but I am wondering minister whether it is consistent, even in my hometown.
They now have a clearly written policy where in two out of three conditions, including the wind and the visibility, and temperature.
If you score two out of these three then it’s up to the parents to send their kids to school, but because it’s not…there is no real guiding individual who says the school should be closed down.
The school is never closed really. It really is up to the parents. Many parents wondered in Rankin Inlet whether or not there is school on today or not, because of the wind chill factor is so cold.
That’s factored in the policy.
But because there is no clear direction from the principal when the student doesn’t attend school, their marks are not consistent; in some cases they are marked late for school or didn’t attend school.
I wonder if minister you could find a way to make it consistent so that at least the principal has a role because I believe only the principal and his officials can register, or define, whether or not the student in question was away from school for legitimate reasons.
I don’t believe it’s the role of the secretary.
Could you explain to us how that should be applied?
I like the suggestion that the member is articulating.
The government does have a standard when we close government offices. I am prepared, within the next couple of weeks, within the Directorate Division of the department to look at if there is an opportunity to bring forward some uniform standards when we look at closing the schools; closures, especially on weather issues.
Right now, as everyone knows, it’s a local DEA concern.
We wouldn’t try to impose our wishes on them. We’d like to have some maybe some opportunities for guidelines that they could look at; which aren’t in place right now.
That may be the agreement that the responsibility probably falls with the DEA, but when the parent is wondering whether or not it is too cold because many of our unilingual individuals don’t know the wind chill factor to factor into policy.
Because as I said earlier you have to score two out of three provisions in the policy whether to send your kid to school or not.
So the parent phoned the school, as an example, recently. And the parent didn’t know what was going on with the weather because she knows enough from Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit that it was very cold. She was worrying about the wind conditions and that it was extremely cold so she phoned the school and said she didn’t know what the wind chill factor was, so she was advised to phone the weather station.
So these are the kind of things that are happening. There are two reasons one is that we certainly want to send our kids to school but if they don’t go to school because of the weather they should not be penalized for missing a day in school.
So, surely, you can have a little more consistency if the school is to operate and not operate.
It should be one person.
Right now we have so many, it’s the DEA, it’s the parent, it’s the school, weather station is involved in two out of three score requirement out of wind chill factor, wind and visibility; it’s all over the place.
So I wonder if you could standardize that simple problem.
As I said earlier, I like what the member is saying.
There should be an opportunity to look at some standards; maybe look at some of the criteria we have for government offices as an example.
And that’s something that we would be prepared to look at to make those suggestions to member DEAs, but at the end of the day the DEA does have the responsibility for closures.
But at least if they had a set standard of criteria as the member has mentioned then everyone would know what those criteria are when the decision is made.
Mr. Curley: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The last point is this; I know a couple of members who have alluded to their DEA status and so on and how the minister has developed the case that the regional boards will not be instituted in the Education Act.
I think to be very clear the document that is titled “The Voice of Parents” submitted by the coalition of the DEAs stated: very short, in 1999 the minister said ultimately managing more of the direction of education would come under the authority of the new Education Act.
In 2004, it was stated there would be a new direction and new powers brought forth for DEAs.
In 2006, it was also stated again in the letter that the decision to dissolve the boards, was guided by the belief that decision-making should be more local and that DEAs should have more responsibility.
In the current system the minister can choose which powers to allow each of the DEAs to take on.
This is unlikely to happen. So in short, the reason is in practice if the DEAs may have all the great power, but that’s not in practice, because the minister ultimately has that power.
How are you going to respond to those kinds of points?
Again, the member brings up one of the areas of, I wouldn’t say contention, but there is a concern that has been made by the DEA Coalition.
I had an opportunity to meet with the DEA Coalition, including the writer of that article that the member’s speaking about. And I tried to reiterate what I feel, and I believe what the government feels, is that when we see a stronger DEA, we see stronger schools and a stronger community and that’s what we’re trying to accomplish in the new Education Act.
I think we had a good debate on that earlier today when we talked about what should the role of the DEA be, and what types of powers or new roles can the DEA take on at the community level. And to ensure that we can support them in doing that but also making sure that they have the abilities to do that before they’re given that power.
So that’s where we are with that right now. I agree with the statement. Again, what I’m trying to do is find that middle ground between what is wanted and what is needed, and how I could facilitate that.
Mr. Curley: Thank you. One more question, really.
Do you not agree that the new Education Act will give you more power than you ever had, or any minister has ever had since 1999. And it’s really up to the minister to grant new powers or new roles under the Act, under your authority. Is that correct?
No, I disagree with the member’s assumption that, again, as I said earlier we don’t have an Act, we’re still in the process of drafting it and so on. I don’t see the Act giving some type of totalitarian powers to the minister and that the minister, with that, would somehow usurp any type of program or process that’s in place.
What we see is an enabling piece of legislation that will allow our schools, our communities, and specifically the DEAs, take on more roles and responsibilities with education at the local level, at the community level, and at the school level, and that’s why we’re trying to emphasize that we see strong DEAs meaning strong schools.
However, everything that the DEAs want we’re not able to provide for various reasons, as Mr. Tootoo had said earlier, logistic, as well as administrative, and financial reasons. So we’re trying to meet them halfway. I think it would be a good piece of legislation once we’re completed but like anything, we can’t please everyone.
Total Operations and Maintenance. $1,208,000. (interpretation) Do you agree?
Total Operations and Maintenance. $841,000. (interpretation) Do you agree?
Chairman: Thank you. G-8.
Total Operations and Maintenance. $2,109,000. (interpretation) Do you agree?
Chairman: G-9.
I talked about this earlier during the committee meeting but I just want to ask a question.
He was talking about gifts to income support recipients. I know he’s going to talk about tickets and all those other gifts and stuff, but I’m not talking about that.
What I’m trying to say is if income support recipients receive something from their relatives and they’re given a gift, like somebody was saying about Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit that if we know that they really need whatever, we have to try to help them out.
So that’s Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, and according to the policy, will the policy be changed to reflect Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit?
As the member knows, we’ve tried to reflect Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit in all programs and service areas of the department, specifically under Income Support, where we have moved to make sure for example that the Co-op tax dividends and benefits are not any longer counted as earned income.
We’ve made changes in the federal benefit programs that are received so they’re not considered earned income. We’ve increased, under earned income, the allowance of $200 per individual and $400 for a family, again, by taking into account what the member has said.
So I think we’ve made some really good strides in looking at that under the Income Support Program.
Chairman: Mr. Arvaluk.
Mr. Arvaluk (interpretation): Perhaps if I use an example, perhaps he can respond to me.
If I’m working very hard for example, and I get a new snowmobile because mine is three years old and my old one is still workable. If I give my old snowmobile, which costs approximately $4,000 if I sold it, if I give that to an individual who’s under income support, according to this policy, would he not be allowed to receive his income support?
If the member, and I think I’ve said this in the House, if the member provides his machine as a gift to his relative or whoever or gives it to them, it doesn’t come off the Income Support Program because the person who’s using that machine, let’s say they use it to go hunting to provide food or something for their family, then that’s making a productive choice, a healthy choice because they are providing for the family.
The Income Support Program states specifically if you are trying to make a productive choice to provide for your family as an example, we don’t deduct the income support amount.
And again, one of the questions came from the House, if a member knows of a case, someone for example received a machine and they are using that for a productive choice, you know for example to get country food for the family and the income support worker has taken that off their account, then they should let the minister know immediately in writing so I can review it, because that is not the case and that is not to occur.
Chairman: Thank you, Minister, Mr. Arvaluk.
Mr. Arvaluk: Does that also apply to Harvesters’ Support Program? Because Harvesters’ Support Program really helps those who cannot have enough capital to purchase equipment.
Does that affect their income support?
If the hunter is receiving support from the Harvesters’ Support Program like you know, getting a machine, which should be like $15,000 or so, that is not taken off their income support, because, again, they are able to supply food and so on for their family.
Page G-9.
I have a question under this. The income support or the subsidy program for elders who own their own homes through the access program, the program is not very visible. I saw an elder who had filled out an application form and they sent the application form to Rankin Inlet and he was told that his application was approved and he was waiting for them to deliver fuel.
They didn’t deliver the fuel because he had to go get the fuel, go to Rankin Inlet, go get the fuel and then the next day bring the fuel. He didn’t know the actual procedure. The procedure has not been explained to my community.
The elders who are Inuktitut unilingual speaking people can’t read and write in English, so they don’t understand the English language and so forth. I was wondering if you’ve already rectified this situation.
Again, the Income Support Program, the Seniors Fuel Subsidy is more of our important programs. We have changed the form and the format to ensure they are available for usage to a unilingual Inuktitut speaking person only.
We also have, like I said earlier, income support workers, which I think are 100 percent Inuk who are able to help the customer or in this case, the client, to be able to access the program.
So the changes have been put in place.
Yes, even though they state that then why don’t they explain to the elders? The income support workers don’t even explain these.
I think they started in November until April and I don’t know how long the program is for.
But what would be the problem if they just fill up the unit in the cold winter months; perhaps twice a winter.
What kind of problem would that cause?
The rate is put in place depending on what community that you live in as a senior. So as an example Mr. Chairman the rate goes from 2,500 litres to 3,175 litres that would we cover under the subsidy program.
It is up to each individual client or elder when they apply for the elders’ subsidy program to make sure the fuel truck comes, for example, to fill up their house.
We don’t do that for the income support client. However, in conversation when the person is applying for the subsidy I am sure the income support person would be available to help the elder to make sure that those requirements are put in place.
Again, we streamlined the process in July and we also did it again in September to ensure that.
Over the last several months, at least December, I can say that we have not received any complaints in the office, my office, concerning the subsidy program for the elders since the changes that we have put in place.