Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to quote a story from the YWCA’s most recent newsletter, which I will table later today. The title is “Living at Rockhill: It made a big difference being here.”

The article reads:

“My boyfriend and I were living at the Ptarmigan Apartments with our son. He’s now two and a half. Rent was $1,675 a month and we started getting behind. Only one of us was working because we couldn’t afford daycare at $800 per month plus rent.

I heard about the Transitional Housing Program and called. They gave us the opportunity of living in an emergency unit for three...

So I guess what we want to see is those residents get additional coverage that will help protect the territorial resources.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for that information. I think I understood that and it explains why some of the other divisions are doing so well. Just on the Minister’s comment that these have O and M dollars associated with them, I would assume those dollars would not be reported under compensation and benefits.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just one quick follow-up on that. I suppose the biggest recommendation to come out of the exercise from the 16th to me was the realization that we really want everybody to have other coverage and that that could be tapped into to help protect our resources.

What proportion of the NWT residents have additional coverage and what are we doing to make sure that those that don’t somehow get it to the extent that that’s possible? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is where the Minister’s explanation kind of falls apart, given that there are a total of two new positions for the department plus one indeterminate part-time, which makes, again, the increase in compensation and benefits quite high. Thank you.

Sorry, just one more question. As Stanton gets more and more cooped up and people are stumbling on each other and working out of closet space and so on, are we finding that we’re using other facilities more? Are people being sent south more and so on? How are we staying on top of the impacts and trying to mitigate this situation at Stanton Territorial? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize Bob Wilson, a long-standing member of the Weledeh riding. Welcome to the House. I’d also like to recognize a couple of hardworking Pages, Linnea Stephenson and Harvey Fells, and thanks to all of the Pages that are serving us here today.

That’s all I have. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks. I’m willing to accept an estimate. We certainly know what the department has increased each year; it’s reported in these big thick documents. So just apply that and compare that to the 2.2 percent with it. That would be good to know.

It’s something obviously we’ve been talking about for a long time. I know we were actively negotiating pushing in the 16th and I’d love to hear that we’re still getting serious with the federal government on this. Thank you.

I believe I heard that this represents 95 percent of the costs, these two figures added together, about $30 million of some costs and we pay the other 5 percent and perhaps that expense is listed in here somewhere. Maybe the Minister can give me a heads-up on where that shows up in our O and M on the other side of the equation here. But I’m assuming that there are other costs beyond these. How and where are they covered?