Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Unfortunately, the request from the MLA requesting that I extend it because of the low numbers within the community just came to me the other day. I felt that I am working with them, working in consensus government, to try to meet the needs of the Members, and, in all honesty, for the best programs for the residents of the Northwest Territories.

I did not sit down and do a cost analysis. However, the survey itself can take between  it depends how much time you want to put into it. It can take between 15 minutes to three hours. Some organizations have taken many days to...

The MLA is correct that the survey is actually open to whoever wishes to fill in the survey. The majority of results are coming from people that are accessing housing programs. Again, that is compiled through Survey Monkey. I have stated that I will not hire someone for every community  it would be a huge amount of money  but I can look at any community that does not have either a local housing organization or a government service officer in that community, if there are any communities, then I will consider hiring someone for that community, but, any communities that have either a local...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There was no intention during the development of this process that we would be looking at cutting these positions. We value them, as well. A future cut, I can say that within my term as the Minister of MACA I will not terminate these positions. However, I cannot state further than my position. So, there was no intention. I can't give a guarantee forever, but, as long as I am the Minister, that is not my intention. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Sorry, Mr. Speaker. I thought it was Housing for a second. Yes, so we can talk about it. At the beginning, the three positions that the MLA is referring to, we are still working on it, and the reason is because within the Sutcliffe Report there were some recommendations on job descriptions. We also felt it was important, so we consulted with stakeholders in the areas, the applicable stakeholders and the staff to develop more comprehensive job descriptions. Because we are looking at being able to utilize our skills in a more appropriate way, so we're hoping that we can actually have positions...

The next steps once we compile the survey results, all of the surveys are entered into what's called the Survey Monkey. Some of the input that has come has been through letters through emails, not all have come through surveys, so we have people actually that are manually entering that data into the Survey Monkey. It will be broken up. The Survey Monkey is able to break things up by communities as the MLAs see when we produced the numbers. It's been able to break things up by if it's a government worker, if it's someone in housing, if it's public housing, if someone in home ownership. We're...

We felt that we did a comprehensive advertising of getting the survey out. We had put it in newspapers, we had put radio advertisements out, we had talked to the local housing organizations and the government service officers, but evidently we still had some work to do. So with the announcing of bringing the survey for one more month, we will be doing more of a strategic radio campaign that we promote it two/three times a week at least. We're going to be looking for times that we know that community people are listening to the radios. We will be promoting it again trying to push our local...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to start by welcoming Diana Bui, who is my constituency assistant. It is her first time in the House. I would also like to recognize Erin Curry, who is one of our constituents from Range Lake. Good friend of mine, Alisa Praamsma, her husband, Jack Bourassa. Although not constituents, very good friends I consider close to my heart. Although Rami is gone, I really want to recognize Rami Kassem as well, who is a constituent in my riding. I want to offer my heartfelt sympathy. I am hoping that somehow they will see that love will outshine hate, and not all of...

That's me. My brain is gone. Excuse me. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table to following document entitled "Followup Letter to Oral Question 36518(2): Tuktoyaktuk Shoreline Erosion Mitigation Project." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Actually, at this point, now, we're just getting things in place. We had expected that the survey would be finished on January 27th. I was approached by an MLA in asking if I would consider extending it, like I had said. Again, this is the first time this is public knowledge or being put out there, that we have agreed to extend it for one month because it is important to get the results.

So, we're in the process of restructuring our whole office to make sure that we have enough people within the policy department to provide the analysis that we need, so we're doing that right now. We also are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As stated before, the results coming in for the survey are actually pretty positive. We're at over a thousand already, which is significant considering we have about 2,400 public housing units and about 400 market housing units, so a thousand out of 2,800 homes is pretty high, recognizing some of that is government.

As stated previously, I will not hire someone specifically to go door-to-door. I think there are better usages of the funds. We are doing a very comprehensive, strategic radio campaign, and, at the smaller communities, where they have very low results, we...