Caroline Cochrane

Within this fiscal year, I don’t see that we can do a new family violence survey due to the financial limitations that we have. Although, I will advocate and try to look into bringing it into the next fiscal budget because, as stated, if is a very valuable tool. There has been a lot of work within the Northwest Territories on family violence. Our Coalition Against Family Violence has done a really remarkable job on communities’ attitudes with the “What Will It Take?” project that they have done. We do need to evaluate that. We need to evaluate if we are on the right track or what else we need...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, absolutely. The 2007 family violence survey provides really valuable information about the attitudes of people within our territories on family violence. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, the GNWT is always interested in working with people to support businesses within the Northwest Territories. However, the request for the proposal has gone out. We will be seeing what comes forward to us. At that point, then we will make a decision on what we need to move from that point forward.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This situation of NTCL came as a surprise to the GNWT as well. We did our due diligence. We looked at alternatives. We made sure we had a backup plan. We have a strong working relationship with NTCL and through our talks and the negotiations, we have actually got their confirmation that they will be sailing for this fiscal year. The court process that they went through, that they initiated, a restructuring process, kind of gave them some leeway to be able to operate for this season. People may be aware that within the current newspapers we do have a new release or...

I am really pleased to hear that one of the MLAs is really taking this to heart because it is a serious issue. I would like to challenge all of our MLAs as well, as our Ministers actually, to take the “What Will It Take?” program in because I think it is something that all of us need to take, need to be aware of, and need to address and be role models within our constituency.

That is a very difficult question in all honesty. I think that attitudes are a part of it. Speaking as a child who came from a home with very severe family violence within that and a large family, I can say from personal knowledge and also professional knowledge, being a social worker for over 20 years, that family violence is a really complex issue. It is a really complex set of solutions to address it. It is not only attitudes. It is about services. It is about women’s ability to take care of themselves. There is a whole complex list of needs that we need to address to be able to actually...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I am more than committed to trying to keep the Members as informed as I can, although sometimes I may need a reminder on that. I acknowledge that. We will commit to speaking to the Member at his convenience on that. Also if the committee would like to, we can provide a briefing on that as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Department of Public Works and Services does recognize that there are some issues going into some of our northern communities. We have taken that into consideration within our request for proposals. There are companies within Canada that actually do have the ability or have the ability to purchase what they will need to be able to provide the service to the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would also like to recognize Lesa Semmler who is a strong advocate for women’s issues, Indigenous women’s issues, and to her partner Jozef Carnogursky who is the president of Nihtat Gwich’in Council. These two people are young and moving up and are going to be strong leaders within our territory, and so I’m glad when the time comes to step aside and let these people take over for us. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Housing Corporation has identified needs within the communities from our previous needs assessment, and so we’ve identified that we need to replace older public housing; we need new affordable housing; we need major renovation projects on public housing. However, we have committed to working with the IRC, and, as such, we will do so before we define exactly what our priorities will be for that region.