Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do recognize that there is a huge need to provide seniors' housing, so we are looking at that. For many years, we focused on multifamily units. We are looking at continuing with multifamily, but also looking at singles' units that will work with seniors, as well. We are looking at seniors' market rental units so that we can actually have combined seniors' units, and that will bring in some income. So, it will be a combined seniors' centre that has some market rental units that people can afford and some public housing, which would supplement that, as well.

Like I have...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I apologize for the miscommunication. No, the money that the federal government gave us we used to renovate the other four family violence shelters. Tuktoyaktuk actually, above and beyond the federal money, the Government of the Northwest Territories through the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, so outside of this money, we provided them a unit that they can use for their shelter because their shelter was beyond economical repair. That is on top of the federal money. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Government of the Northwest Territories recognizes that we can't work in silos. We have two forms of committees. We have the deputy ministers who meet regularly for various committees, economic development, social causes, etc. We also have Ministers' committees, that we meet for the same economic development, social programs. I see jobs as economic development, but also taking care of people, which is a social program. We are trying to work really closely together across departments to provide the best services for people within the Northwest Territories. and specifically to help not only...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I will take my colleague's comment and say there are no tumbleweeds in the territory. What is the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs doing to help small community governments? The Department of Municipal and Community Affairs really works with community governments to basically deal with their infrastructure. We provide funding so that they can have clean water, so that they can have waste facilities, so that they can have emergency planning, fire services. We also provide a component so that they can build capital planning and programs that actually...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, Municipal and Community Affairs does try to work with smaller communities as much as possible so that we can keep people in their communities. That is why we have a focus on sports and recreation. We also provide a lot of training so that people can operate their own, for example, water treatment centres. We offer training so that people can actually maintain them in their communities.

We do a circuit rider program that will go into the communities and actually provide one-on-one support to those people as well. We are looking at our training mechanism so that we...

The Auditor General's report actually gave us 13 recommendations. A lot of them were talking about things like waste management, fire safety, and emergency planning. Some of it that pertains, maybe, to the honourable Members' question are around our accountability framework so that we can actually provide questions so that we make sure that community governments are providing the services they need within their communities, and we have some way of verifying them as well.

The other thing that might be applicable is for the designated authorities, of which there are nine within the territories...

Yes, as stated previously, the department actually goes in and works with each community to develop a capital infrastructure plan that is used to apply for funding. We don't actually have public meetings on it, but we are available to each community as needed to go in and actually help them fill out their application process.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Municipal and Community Affairs actually works quite closely with the municipal governments to access the funding, the infrastructure funding that is provided by the federal government, so we work one-on-one. We help them do their capital planning throughout the year; we identify areas that they might need to build more infrastructure on, and then we actually will sit and help them fill out the applications as needed. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories made a commitment in its mandate to support and participate in the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls in collaboration with families, Aboriginal governments, the federal government, and other organizations. I would like to update Members today on the work our government is doing to fulfill that commitment.

The National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was formally launched by the Government of Canada on September 1, 2016. Since my last update on this initiative, the national...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, all of the communities in the Sahtu region have applied and successfully applied for the infrastructure funding. We will be going into Colville Lake within the next two weeks to actually help them with their application. They are the only community in the Sahtu region that hasn't yet applied successfully.