Caroline Cochrane

I am more than interested in visiting the communities and the regions. I would, however, have to have a date, so I could check my schedule. If available, I would be pleased.

At this point, no, we don’t know what their plans are, but we can inquire and we can get back to the Member on that.

 On March 10th, I will be meeting with the federal housing Minister to talk about the social infrastructure money that may be coming to the Territories. Once the federal budget is defined, then we will be able to put forward cases to look at that issue. 

I am certain that it would be the goal of the GNWT to eradicate homelessness and to provide housing for every person in the Territories. However, would that goal be realistic would be the other problem to do. This will take time. It took a lot of time to get here. It's going to take a lot of time to fix. We are hoping that the federal government will follow through on its promise to invest in social infrastructure funding, though.

 Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To actually get an accurate count on homelessness is something that is a huge challenge, because you can just look at the shelters. You can get numbers from there. You can actually get numbers from the RCMP, but there is a whole population of hidden homelessness that is unmanageable or unrealistic to be able to count, and those include people that are youth, that are sleeping on couches, a lot of families sharing accommodations. Unless people identify as being homeless, then it's really hard to get those numbers. To get an accurate figure, I'm afraid that that would be...

We had a couple of problems, actually, with the starting of it. We negotiated with the contractor in 2015 and this summer, he started working on it. He installed 11 piles in July, but we didn't have our geotechnical inspector on-site so we stopped work on that project. We need to have the proper regulators watching when they're doing the construction. As the MLA had stated earlier there were also some water issues and we are working with the contractor. Now we’re back on track and the building will be completed within this fiscal year.

Mr. Speaker, increasing the availability of safe affordable housing and building stronger relationships with community governments and other stakeholders are two of the priorities agreed to by Members of the Legislative Assembly. I am pleased to report that the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation is working on both of these priorities by creating new local housing organizations in Fort Liard, Gameti, and Whati. Not only will this create jobs in the community and increase economic development, it'll also greatly improve service to community members. Residents who previously had questions...

 Part of the process that we will be looking for consultation from the communities on changes to the Housing Corporation will include a summary of all of the programs, a two-page summary, very basic, very plain. Within that, we are looking to help people understand what we have and what we need to change. After we get award from the federal government, at that point we will be looking at doing a communication strategy so that people understand what programs are available.

 Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, actually. The NWT Housing Corporation is actually looking at all of our programs to see if we can make access to the programs easier, to assist in things such as land tenure. That's been an issue within the communities, so we are looking to see if we can take that out. As well, just to give notification that the NWT Housing Corporation will be sending out, in April, a survey to all of the LHOs, to all community workers, or to people that are using public housing to see what programs are working well and what we need to change, and then we will develop a plan going...

 At this point, yes, the Northern Pathways to Housing is putting in seniors' facilities into Behchoko, Fort Simpson, and Aklavik. Actually, Fort Providence is the next community on the table. I can't guarantee whether they will be able to put homeless shelters into every community, but we will be looking at putting a homeless shelter into every region. That would be the goal at this point.