Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are also on spending money on housing, but they are not for my friend the Minister of Finance or for the Minister of Housing Corporation. They're for the Minister of Infrastructure, because he helped announce $570 million in federal infrastructure funding earlier this week.

In our Committee of the Whole review of the NWT Housing Corporation, I asked questions of the Housing Corporation on what proportion of the new funds will be applied to the $67 million cost of taking our housing out of core need. I looked at the funding announcements. Some of those...

Merci, Monsieur le President. Today I would like to set out my position on collective bargaining, the Union of Northern Workers negotiations, and MLA compensation. Collective bargaining began to be used in 1891 to describe negotiations and agreements that were used in Great Britain following the rise of organized labour. Collective bargaining is recognized as a fundamental human right in Article 23 of the 1948 UN Declaration on Human Rights.

Our workers thus have the right to organize and bargain collectively. I respect that right and truly wish for a freely negotiated agreement for the UNW...

Merci, Monsieur le President. I'd like to thank the Minister for that response. Again, my questions are really focused on the funding announcement that he made in the Great Hall here earlier this week. I know there are other funding pots out there, but I want to know about the $570 million that was announced earlier this week. Can the Minister tell us whether there is a full plan to spend this money and if that plan can be made public? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks to the Minister for that. I look forward to these other announcements. I sort of anticipated that he would say that the $36 million over 10 years under the National Housing Strategy would cover off our housing needs, but, of course, that small amount really can't help us with our core housing needs, which have been calculated at $67 million. Where are the funds going to come from, and why can't we use some of the federal infrastructure funding that the Minister announced earlier this week?

Can the Minister explain whether there are any legal or funding guideline requirements that prevent...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank my colleagues on both sides of the House for permission to continue.

Constituents of Frame Lake have asked my position on these issues and I am now on the public record. I recognize this statement may not be popular with some of my colleagues in this House, but I owe it to my constituents and all of our employees to make my position clear. Mahsi Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I will keep this very brief. I just want to thank the members of the standing committee for their work. I learned a lot. This is not an area that I knew very much about. I think that I am better informed now.

I also want to thank the Minister, who is not listening to me, but I do want to sincerely thank him for engaging in this discussion and debate. It's kind of an awkward place to do it, in Committee of the Whole, but I do very much appreciate him engaging in the debate and discussion. It does not happen often enough in this House, so I want to thank him.

I would like to thank the Minister for that. If there is some way that he could share the funding guidelines or more information about that with me, I would appreciate that very much. Can the Minister tell us whether any of the newly announced federal infrastructure funding will be allocated to or delivered through the Arctic Energy Alliance, and if so, how much and over what period of time?

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Yes, I appreciate the commitment from the Minister on that one. I am actually going to be going to a public meeting tonight on the Giant Mine remediation, and that is one of the questions I have there, because that is going to be the single largest government project that has ever been undertaken in Yellowknife. It is over $1 billion.

From what I understand, there really is no northern training. I don't know. I have questions around that, but is this something that the Department of Infrastructure is involved with in any way, and have there been any discussions about ensuring...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Can the Minister tell us where we are at with regard to any contract work to do the maintenance on the road? Has a contract been signed, or is it out for tender, or what? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. The reason why I'm raising this is that some of us have had an opportunity to meet with the Northern Territories Federation of Labour on this specific issue of how other jurisdictions actually use their large infrastructure projects for training, well, to build capacity for doing training and trades and apprenticeships, and so on. If we don't really have a policy around that, I'm a bit concerned.

Mr. Guy talked about how some of this was done on the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk highway. Can the department provide us with a little bit more information, then, about how these matters...