Human Resources committee  Mr. Allison, by way of conclusion, thank you. We'll get that to you, and I thank you very much.

Human Resources committee  I appreciate your feedback.

Human Resources committee  I would say to you, Mr. Lake, that we're not judge and jury in trying to determine who needs help or who doesn't. It's not for me to make that decision. Our responsibility is to provide people with opportunities. Where we see weaknesses in our society, we try to strengthen the su

Human Resources committee  That's the million-dollar challenge that you, I, and every other elected official in this country deals with every day. How I deal with it is, again, by going back to the community that I live in and talking to the people in the community that I live in about the kind of communit

Human Resources committee  Yes, we have a drug treatment facility. We have at least a couple in the province. In terms of young people, we partner with our policing services here. They offer drug programs in our schools. In terms of children, we have education programs that are done through schools. I me

Human Resources committee  In terms of a turning point, I think as a province we certainly were perceived to be “have not”. That's a term we have heard lots of times. We recognized that there were people who were struggling in our province. One of the benefits to being a province that's relatively small in

Human Resources committee  Again, there were a number of initiatives that we brought forward. For people who are on income support or welfare, as you may refer to it, we have an overlap period now. If somebody leaves income support and goes to work, for the first month after they go to work they're still e

Human Resources committee  That's a tough question, Mr. Martin, to give a short answer to. The point I will make to you is that I think it's important for me to reiterate that this is not just about money. Having money is not necessarily going to resolve the issue of poverty. It's about access. It's about

Human Resources committee  I certainly don't disagree with you. Giving people adequate levels of income to provide adequate housing, warmth, and food and so on is important. That is something we need to do. But there are some people who still need other support. Even if they have the housing, the heat, and

Human Resources committee  Yes is the short answer. We have made it easier. We have also implemented some fairly significant changes in our high school curriculum. For example, we have a major initiative whereby we've brought the trades programs into the high school curriculum, so children who may not be a

Human Resources committee  I'm not quite sure I understand when you ask about improvements; improvements relative to what, exactly?

Human Resources committee  In the past, no grants at all would be given to students. Basically, if they wanted to access funding, students had to borrow the funds. Everything they received from the government was a loan that had to be paid back. As I've indicated, we now give up to $70 per week, which is

Human Resources committee  I'll ask Lynn to respond to your question, particularly on the duplication area.

Human Resources committee  A lot of the money we've been able to utilize has been invested in our social programs. Our poverty reduction strategy is not just based on oil revenues. We view the whole pot of money we have as a province, and we use it as we see where our priorities are. Our poverty reduction

Human Resources committee  I'll refer to the goals, Ms. Dhalla, for a second, if you'll bear with me. I just want to give you an idea so the people in the audience will understand. The goals we identified were improved access and coordination of services for those with low incomes, a stronger social safe