Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my right is Eleanor Young. She is the deputy minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.

As stated earlier, the action plan will be developed. We're looking at it now and it will be developed and ready to share with standing committee in the fall, prior to Christmas. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

No opening comments.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a little bit ahead of the game to actually say that. We will have the plan developed before Christmas; after that, once we've developed the plan and identified exactly what we'll need if we need to go for a supplementary appropriation, then we will look at that. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I hope that satisfies Mrs. Claus' comments. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Derelict buildings throughout the Northwest Territories are an issue for the Housing Corporation. Once they reach the stage of being derelict, they are no longer transferable to people. It is not appropriate to give them to people for home ownership, and the cost to renovate them is more substantial than actually to build new units. We are working very actively to address the derelict buildings within the communities. I believe we have over 33 in this fiscal year that we have taken off. We will, every year, be looking at demolishing the derelict buildings, but it is important to note that...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That is correct. At this point, we have not finalized the implementation plan. Before we spend capital money on equipment, et cetera, for 911, like I said, we need to do a lot of work with communities. There are some communities within the Northwest Territories that do not even have street addresses. It is a matter of we cannot send a 911 service and say, "It's the red block behind Charlie's house," you know, so we have work to do before we are ready to develop an NWTwide 911 service.

Some of the communities, like Yellowknife, for example, are more advanced in that way...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Currently, the 10 units on the Hay River reserve were negotiated with the Hay River reserve and the federal government to get the units and the land leases that were held by the federal government. During this fiscal year, we actually will be doing renovations to the building, to some of the units. It will take some time. We currently have one person in those units who was in that unit when we took it over from the K'atlodeeche First Nation band. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I should note that, yes, although we don't have finalized on where the Phase 2 of the Invest in Canada Plan funding will go, we do have still 29 communities that are still working on their infrastructure plans or projects from the Phase 1, so the Clean Water and Wastewater Fund, which was almost $52 million, and then the Public Transit Infrastructure money, which was $320,000. Those projects are supposed to be done at the end of March 2018, so some communities are still working on those. That's just a note. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The difficulty for all departments, including Municipal and Community Affairs, is we are working within the fiscal framework and the economy is not that great. We have to make sure that all of the departments access the funding that they need to be able to provide critical services, so, at this point, we will not be addressing that at this current time.

Like I say, we are looking at the assets that each community has, where we will be trying to prioritize based on that assessment with the communities. It is really sad if communities do want to put in a skating rink or a...

The next Northern Indigenous Games are actually in Winnipeg in 2020, so in the meantime, we are actually doing a sector-wide strategy with all of the stakeholders, sports and recreation organizations to look at gaps, to look at areas that we are duplicating, to look at areas that we could improve. Part of that is looking at how to get more participation for all residents of the Northwest Territories. The other thing that we are doing within that strategy is we will also be implementing the Truth and Reconciliation recommendations surrounding sports, as well.