Caroline Cochrane

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...

My awareness, right now in Hay River we're working with the Small Community Homelessness Fund in providing support to the Hay River Soup Kitchen, the Hay River committee for people with disabilities and the Family Support Centre. As I said, once we have been strategic in what we're doing in the capital area, then we'll be reaching out to the communities. One thing I should have said also is that we are building small units within other communities in the North, so we're not only focusing on Yellowknife. We are taking a holistic approach.

I can't say directly if there's any in Hay River. I will get back to the Member on that question. My background is in Yellowknife, so thirdparty housing providers are things like Rock Hill or the Bailey House or Lynn's Place places, that provide social housing to the communities and that we support them as well.

Anything outside of Yellowknife, actually, meets the definition of “small communities.” There are some projects that we're doing. There are things already in place, the Northern Pathways to Housing; the Small Community Homelessness Fund which gives food, et cetera; transitional supportive housing; public housing, everybody's aware of; Homelessness Assistance Fund. Then the Small Community Homelessness Fund, like I say, provides mostly meals, foods, and you can get, in the south it's up to $10,000 and in the northern regions it's up to $15,000.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Homelessness is a serious issue within the whole Northwest Territories, and it’s a priority of the 18th Legislative Assembly and a personal issue for myself, a professional issue, so I am committed to addressing homelessness during my tenure here. The $600,000 specifically, though, is to work with the resident or the homeless shelters within the Yellowknife area because of the need, the amount of homeless people in the community. Once that is finished, then we would be looking to work within the other communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The coordinating thresholds that we use to determine allocations for programs that the Housing Corporation utilizes is done every two years, and they are separated into different zones between communities, and recognizing that there are differences within incomes and the cost of living within each zone, so there are certain things that we do. For example, I'll give an example of the PATH program to emphasize that. Within Yellowknife for the PATH program, because of the cost of living, people who are applying for housing, their own housing, can get up to a five per cent...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Government of the Northwest Territories has made a commitment in its mandate to work in partnership with other orders of government to address affordable housing requirements. As Members already know, our territory has housing needs well beyond those of the rest of Canada, especially in our rural and remote communities. The Northwest Territories has the second highest level of core housing need in the country at 20 per cent while the national average is 12.5 per cent. To address this disparity, the Northwest Territories requires a long term, sustainable, and...

Thank you for acknowledging that I went to the community yesterday to specifically look at the location, et cetera. At this point, once the old hospital is emptied out, we will do a final assessment. My assumption at this point is that it won't be valuable to renovate versus tearing it down. The other really important point is that once that hospital is taken down it will be another option that Health and Social Services can look at when they're developing their long-term care for long-term care beds.

On May 25th of this year, the department has issued a new tender for a multi-year fuel supply and delivery contracts to serve the eight marine accessible communities as I stated before. The contract, once approved, will begin in 2017 and it will be a multi-year contract similar to NTCL. Also I want to raise that even though Public Works and Services doesn't transport too much of the dry goods, such as groceries, into the communities we still are concerned about that, so we will be ensuring that the supplier will be taking dry cargo as well to make sure. On a side note, we've also recently...

NTCL has advised Public Works and Services that this summer they intend to sell to all the communities that they typically served in prior years. That includes Sachs Harbour, Paulatuk, Ulukhaktok, Lutselk'e, Tulita, Fort Good Hope, Norman Wells, Tuktoyaktuk, Inuvik, and Aklavik. The fuel services division of Public Works and Services also ensure that there are fuel reserves in each of the communities to offset any unforeseen interruptions. This is a long-standing practice and we continue with that.