Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. From experience, sometimes we find that some people are very well-expertised in putting together training programs, but they still don’t get it in terms of them facilitating or delivering a cross-cultural or any type of training program. How will the people in the Sahtu be in the forefront of actually teaching the program or putting the program together in terms of this cultural training that would be greatly received, hopefully, by the GNWT employees?

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the Minister when the department rolls out this cross-cultural training program, when, I guess, is the time frame in terms of dates as to when he thinks that it will be delivered in the Sahtu region.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to ask the Minister, in terms of the federal, provincial and territorial levels, are the Ministers coordinating a strong strategic position to continue hammering the federal government on the other ways that they can support them with their housing declining dollars that they need to keep the federal government on those? Right now it seems like they are offloading the social housing to the communities, or to the Territories, and for us it is going to be hundreds of millions of dollars if we take on this role here.

That’s quite a considerable amount of money that’s declining. I want to tie this into the core needs housing survey that was done in 2009. Some of the high communities in the number were my area. Listening to the Minister, I was hoping we could match some of the funding that would address some of the core needs in the Northwest Territories. I’m hoping what the Minister’s wishes were if we were to do another survey, I hope to see the numbers come down. That’s what I’m hoping for. I know that won’t happen within the life of this Assembly, again, to do another needs survey.

With this in mind here...

Mr. Chair, I wanted to say to the Minister here and the staff here that the housing units that we have in our communities, I certainly look forward to the Minister’s suggestions in his opening statements in further detail as to how we’re going to help people in those units, help people get into those units. We were in Deline and a statement was made at a leadership meeting with the Premier. Again, there are 100 units, I think, and there were 50 percent that were vacant. A lot of people were out of those units. That was just a statement in the meeting. I just want to clarify that and close that...

Mr. Speaker, certainly I look forward to the new policy. I’m so happy I just about choked on it here, Mr. Speaker. I’m very pleased to hear what the Minister has said. I wanted to ask the Minister, there are 600 families in the Sahtu and 330 families make less than $75,000. I want to ask the Minister in regards to the public housing units in the Sahtu. Will the Minister also be coming forward in terms of rent scale adjustments so that families do have an equal chance to make it in society in terms of adjusting their rents that is liveable in the public housing units?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister of the Housing Corporation in terms of working with the home ownership of the housing in my region. We seem to be running into a lot of issues with land tenure on the Commissioner’s lots and sometimes that prevents applications from being looked at or being seriously considered for approval. I want to ask the Minister if, in his strategy, would there be some movement in terms of how do we deal with the land tenure issue, especially for the elders in my communities.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When the Premier and I met with the Sahtu people the other day in Deline, we heard leaders talk about housing. It is still in the minds of our elders, Mr. Speaker, when the government came to our communities and asked our people to move off the land and into government houses, and that they would only have to pay $2 a month for their house. It is very clear to our elders when the government told this to them. Why would people ask to move into government houses? More importantly, what was told to them and promised to my people by the government about housing?

Mr. Speaker...

Certainly if there is anything that you can do with your counterparts, Mr. Minister, to let the federal government know the importance of their support. You talked about the energy-efficient homes that we want in the Northwest Territories. That means working with your other colleagues in government here to put these types of houses in our communities. I hope you have luck with the president coming to the North. Certainly we welcome him to look at some of the homes that we have in our communities, in Colville Lake to look at some of the situations that people have to live there. He may have a...

I’ll have to hope that between now and the end of August we could do a quick look at those, the core needs survey, to see if it’s there, to see the numbers come down. The Minister is confident, so I hope that the Minister does make sure the numbers come down in my region, because we certainly want to see that.

I want to ask the Minister about creating programs for the core needs. One of them that other Members talked about was the seniors program. Some of the programs that used to be in the communities for the seniors, and I like what the Minister said that there’s possibly some discussion...