Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Addressing the housing needs of vulnerable people, including seniors, single people, and homeless individuals, has been a key priority of this government and all Members of this legislature. The Northwest Territories Housing Corporation is addressing the housing challenges faced by vulnerable groups through its investments and infrastructure projects.

On August 1, 2019, we opened the new seniors' nine-plex building in Fort McPherson. This building is one of five that were designed in collaboration with the Department of Health and Social Services and with input from the...

As I mentioned with the seniors' complex, we want to make sure that we do our best to ensure that we get our seniors moving into the nine-plex that we just opened up, but at the same time, I mean, one other good-news story is that, if we get our seniors moving out of public housing into the nine-plex, then we open up more units for any of our residents who need to move into public housing. So we are going to try our best, and I will keep the Member updated on how we are moving in terms of getting the appliances into the nine-plex.

Really quickly, we are working with our partners to see what options are out there that allow our clients to face fewer barriers around insurance. I think that education is going to be a part of that. We need to work with our financial partners to address this. I think that, moving into the 19th Assembly, because we are right on the tail end of this session, that is something that we need to look at addressing. Members coming into the 19th, I think, should continue to have these types of questions moving forward for our residents across the territory. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Before anything, we always try to provide the best services for our residents and tenants that reply for housing throughout the Northwest Territories. We give all of our residents every opportunity to stay in their homes. We do not deny public housing applications to those who can't afford insurance. We strongly recommend that public housing tenants do get insurance, though, and we work with our partners to try to address that.

It is also mentioned in the lease agreements that tenants are advised to obtain some type of insurance moving forward, not only for the housing complex, but for their...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have had the honour of doing a lot of work over the years and being on the front lines and doing some great health promotion work with a great team. As Members know, I am leaving. Up in the gallery, I would like to recognize Elsie DeRoose, who was a strong mentor and strong leader within the health promotion. I am really glad that she is here in the gallery today. It is really good to see you. I just want to thank you for all of the support and the work that you have done.

As always, Anthony J. Whitford, I know that you made some time to come and join us here today, so...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have been working with a lot of our community governments as well as NGOs. At the same time, we are working, as the Member has known, as I've made statements in the House, on the Northern Pathways to Housing Program. Those have been successful. They have been pilot projects. In Simpson and Aklavik, we have seen some really good things moving forward, as well as in Behchoko. Moving forward from this program, I think we can work with our community governments to possibly access some of our co-investment dollars or the community housing support initiative dollars to...

At this time, I have nothing in terms of what the next steps would be. Obviously, as I said in the previous answer, it is something that can go into a transitional document as something that might be taken under consideration for whoever is going to be sitting in this House. Those are the only next steps that I would say, to have those discussions moving forward, but it is really going to be on who is in this House next government to have those discussions. Like I said, we have a week left, and we will see what we will begin doing. I will make sure that our department has an indication that...

Obviously, the Northern Pathways to Housing program is one of our successes that we have seen, and we will continue to work on that. It's a piloted project. I just want to also say, Mr. Speaker, our staff have been doing a great job in meeting with our leadership, meeting with our non-government organizations to address homelessness, and we all need to work together. I think that's one of things that we came out of the housing summit that was up in Inuvik. We also have the Reaching Home program that we are pushing out, and our staff has been trying to get out to as many communities as they can...

I have chatted with the staff and talked about putting a transitional document. I know we do have a transitional committee here within the next government, but I really wanted to make sure that, with something as important as housing, that I would sit down with my staff and we would look at creating some type of a transitional document moving into the next government. Over the past two governments, we have made some really big strides and we have had some great leadership from our past Ministers who were responsible for housing, and I just want to carry that forward and make sure that we...

One of the biggest things that we have done through the NWT Housing Corporation is we have been really advocating on behalf of the Indigenous governments in all of our communities across the Northwest Territories with the federal government. The Inuvialuit Regional Corporation is one of the communities that have been able to access funding dollars through ITK, and one of the things that came out of that was we started the housing summit, first housing summit, where we had all our leadership in attendance, and working on trying to build a one voice to take to our NIOs, our National Indigenous...