Caroline Cochrane

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the follow document entitled “North Slave Resiliency Study Final Report.” Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, the senior management within the NWT Housing Corp. also recognizes the aging-in-place for seniors issue is huge and that we need to address it. We are taking a really proactive approach to actually providing housing so that people can age in place.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Selfgovernance is an aspect that I actually take personally, and that I do respect and honour and believe it is the right way to support First Nations people and give them back ownership of their people and all of their culture, et cetera. I am committed to working closely with the First Nations communities and seeing what we can do to provide them, because at some point within selfgovernance, there will come a time, maybe not in this government, but soon, that they will need to take ownership of all of their services, housing, child protection, income support, all of...

Yes, the NWT Housing Corporation is committed to doing a community housing development plan, specific for every community. We will be looking within that to get answers from people who live in the homes, the LHO’s within every community, the community government and the staff of course, of the corporation. As well, I will be asking feedback from our MLAs in, to also give feedback into the questionnaires within this survey before it is put out.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My understanding is that the treaty does state that the government will provide housing. However, the treaty does not state that housing will be free within that treaty. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it has been just over one year since the Government of the Northwest Territories’ energy functions were consolidated in the Department of Public Works and Services. Today I would like to update Members on some of the work that this division is doing. The Government of the Northwest Territories has made commitments in its mandate to improve access to energy efficient products and to investigate and implement renewable and alternative energy solutions. Public Works and Services efforts in this area included the installation of energy efficient LED...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As stated, we do use the Business Incentive Policy to evaluate all proposals. We have sent out new proposals for this year and, coincidentally, the majority of all of the proposed proponents came in are actually northern businesses. This round will actually be all northern businesses. As well though, I do want to mention that the NWT Housing Corporation does recognize that we need to have jobs in the community. In an effort to provide jobs within each community and also to have better access to the corporation and to our services, we actually employ 128 people in the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When the modular homes were purchased, prior to my term and governance actually, we used the bid process and there was substantial savings, over 30 per cent savings, with using the modular homes. The cost of transportation, although there may be some differences, we still have to get those homes up by barge and stuff. There is still transport whether we use it to take the materials from the South or to bring the modular homes; there would still be a transportation cost within that, the amount I cannot state at this time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to be able to say yes, that there would be a decline by 20 people. However, in the short period of time that I have been a Minister, I have noticed that there's been an increase within homeless people within the community. I am not as optimistic, and I would have to say that probably this is going to be a long-standing issue that we will have to dedicate a lot of time within the next, not only the four years, but for a longer period. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There's actually a few things that we're doing to reduce the shelter bed nights, the amount of people that are staying in the shelters within the Yellowknife community. For one, we are working with the City of Yellowknife with their Housing First project. We're also working with the shelters to implement a Housing First project within their own so that they can move some of the people that are in their units into more of an independent living structure. Finally, we are working within the communities as well to implement emergency shelters within the community, three...