Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories has made a commitment in its mandate to supporting elders by building more seniors’ supported independent living units and marketing maintenance, renovation, and mobility upgrades to help seniors age in place. I would like to advise Members that the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation is delivering on these commitments with five nine-unit seniors’ buildings in Aklavik, Fort Liard, Fort McPherson, Fort Good Hope, and Whati. In each of these buildings, eight units will be occupied by seniors, and one unit will...

The Department of Health and Social Services and the NWT Housing Corporation sit on a number of ministerial committees that we talk about various issues. Seniors are one of the populations that we talk within that. We want to make sure that the Housing Corporation provides these services to people as long as they can maintain their own care, and then when they get to a point where they can't, then we want to make sure that we have kind of as seamless as possible a transition into long-term care. Really working closely hand in hand is key to be able to facilitate proper care for our seniors in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are actually a number of programs. Of course, there is the SAFE program that addresses immediate safety needs. There is the CARE Minor that will address things like small renovations that need to be done, perhaps a rail in the bathroom, and then there is CARE Major that will address larger things that include things like ramps going up to access into the building, et cetera, so quite a variety of programs. I also want to mention that we are doing the community needs survey. Once that comes in, we may be changing our programs based on what the communities say that...

As most Members may be aware, once the move goes into Housing First, then we are at risk of actually jeopardizing the emergency shelters. Emergency shelters will always be a necessity within the homeless population, especially in the North because we have such a transient population, so if I was to go out and put every single person into a house today, by tomorrow, perhaps even this evening, we would have more people. My obligation is as we move forward in the Housing First model, we need to make sure that our emergency shelters are sustainable, and through that, if they are only based on the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you for that comment about the 20 people and another in 2019. The City of Yellowknife has actually put forward in a meeting with the city councillors and the Yellowknife MLAs that they would be piloting one person this fiscal year. They also put it in their June 3rd in the media that they would be housing one person within this fiscal year to begin with. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I apologize for the miscommunication. I can't really speak for the Department of Health and Social Services, and my colleague is not here today due to illness. What I can say is that we are committed to try to keep people within their communities as long as possible. However, there does come a point when the capacity of the community is such that people, some people, will need to be moved into long-term care. My commitment is, as long as we can keep people within their own homes, within their own communities, then as Minister of Housing I will do my best to make sure that we provide the...

Yes. The Minister does acknowledge that the best care for seniors and our people is to be able to be in their homes as long as possible without having to go to disturb that. There is a huge component that says wellness and individual mental health is linked to being able to stay in their own facilities. I just wanted to state that we will be looking at prioritizing seniors.

The federal government has given us within the next two years a budget of $1.5 million that we will be using. Then, within that, the NWT Housing Corporation for this coming fiscal year, we're going to be doing 63 senior...

All of the people that I'm talking about are actually chronic homeless. Within the partnership with the City of Yellowknife, they will be housing one chronic homeless person. They have $240,000 to put to the table for this initiative this year. As well, the GNWT is putting forward $150,000 to help them with this, for a total $390,000. For the 30 rooms that we're going to do, the semiindependent with the emergency shelters which are also working on a Housing First model, in fact, actually went down south to study the model, we will spend less than three times the amount, a onetime funding of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, as well, coming into work today encountered two individuals out back who were intoxicated; however, even though my history has been 20 years working with homeless people, I for one cannot attest that those two individuals were actually homeless people. I'm not sure if what we were seeing was public drunkenness, loitering, or homelessness. I often think that sometimes people see them all and just automatically claim homelessness which is actually an insult to people. What is our plan for moving forward? As Members know, we did have a community forum here in...

As stated, we are partnering with the City of Yellowknife on the strong advocacy of the couple of Yellowknife MLAs. Their RFP just closed today. We are not sure when it will be done, but they have promised us that their one individual will be housed within this fiscal year. As for the 30 individuals that we are working with, the construction will begin this summer, and, before the winter, that construction will be finished.