Caroline Cochrane

In April 2015, the federal government established a National Disaster Mitigation Program with small communities; communities can apply to deal with the effects of climate change or other natural disasters. In the fall of 2016, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, actually on behalf of Aklavik, we submitted a funding request for $255,000 to create a mitigation plan that will identify the measures designed to reduce or eliminate the impact of shoreline erosion. This funding is expected to be confirmed in the next couple of weeks, and once the approval is in, we will start work...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have some funding through our gas tax agreement that will provide for travel. The agreement does not provide for salaries, for wages actually, so therefore we'll be using the money that we are allocated for travel to provide the support for face-to-face as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We are going to the Indigenous Games. We are just not taking the Youth Ambassador Program there. Different programs will be utilized for that event. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

That is correct, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In my opinion, I try to be as fair as possible within reason. When I look at the whole of the Northwest Territories, and I see that within five regions, we are only providing support to three regions, then yes, the system is broken. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would love to be able to stand here and say that we have all of the answers figured out. The honest truth is that we don't. However, I do know that the data shows that one in six households in Yellowknife are in core need due to affordability. That tells me that we have a serious problem with people being able to afford the rental accommodations in the Yellowknife area and, therefore, a rent subsidy program makes sense. It actually makes more sense than building more public housing when you do it on a costanalysis basis. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The last review to the Consumer Protection Act was last updated in 2011. However, it was only looked at in relation to the costofcredit disclosure, so that was the last time that the act was actually reviewed.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Actions that we are currently taking to address the needs of consumers within the Northwest Territories, basically I want to state that we don't get a lot of complaints. First of all, we have only gotten 18 complaints in the last three years. Changes to the act are usually made based on the number of complaints that we receive. We are wondering if that is maybe a communication problem.

In this fiscal year, we have developed a plain-language guide on the current consumer affairs programming and what we do. Within that guide we have where we explain the government's role...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is really hard to determine how long somebody will remain homeless. At the same time, while we are looking at the policy and the program review, we are trying to address homelessness through a variety of ways. We have put money into the Housing First project in Yellowknife. We are building semi-independent rooms within the current shelters. We are building units within the communities. We are working on homelessness at the same time there is the policy review.

The deciding of the wait list is a little bit more complicated than deciding if you have children or not. There are a lot of factors that go into that, such as what is your current living situation, are you in harm's way at this point. Number of children do count in that, but there are a lot of other factors besides just whether you have children or not.