Statements in Debates
Mr. Speaker, on Saturday it was a very special day for a graduating class of Samuel Hearne Secondary School. Every year we have graduation ceremonies all across the Northwest Territories, but what makes this one extra special is it is the final graduation class of Samuel Hearne Secondary School, which is slated for demolition later on this summer.
Of the two schools we have in Inuvik, SAMS, was built, I believe, around 1959, and Samuel Hearne was about 1967. They are a significant part of the history of Inuvik. As a kid going to SAM School, which only went up to Grade 6, you couldn’t wait to...
The Housing Corporation works very hard to try to get people into units. However, we have to make sure that these folks are able to maintain the units and we’re not setting them up for failure. We are working that particular situation. I know we’ve tried to make some contact and I’ll have conversations with the Member about that. We work very hard to get tenants into a lot of these units, the ones that have been vacant for awhile. We don’t want any more vacant units. We’ve managed to turn a lot of them into public housing units just so we can get them occupied. It is still a bit of a challenge...
I appreciate the Member telling me how many vacant units are in the Sahtu. We had a very aggressive vacant unit strategy a few years ago because of the investment that was made by the federal government. We had 135 units. We’re happy to say those are all full. We have a few new units that are going up. There may be a couple vacant in each community, but what we’re planning on doing is we’re hoping to get more and more people into those units as they qualify for some of our programs. We’ll move them in there. Compared to the situation of a couple of years ago, I think we’re down to very few...
Thank you. I can commit to the Member that from MACA’s perspective, we’ll do some research and see how much work is required to put this into force, and that’s where the feasible part of it comes in. There’s always going to be a cost to everything, but I will commit to the Member that we’ll do some research as far as the other jurisdictions go and see where we can enact some of that or maybe borrow some of their legislation, but it’s going to be quite a piece of work. Again, we kind of wait on CRTC to see what they come up with before we decide to go the next step. But I will commit to the...
Mr. Speaker, I’d like to recognize two Pages we have in the gallery today from Inuvik, Ms. Angie Edwards and Ms. Tamara Gordon, along with their chaperone and my constituency assistant, Ms. Leah Ipana. Welcome to the Assembly.
The strategic framework Building for the Future: Northern Solutions for Northern Housing, released on April 16, 2012, outlines the direction that the Housing Corporation will be taking in delivering housing programs and services to NWT residents.
Our new strategic framework has refocused the GNWT’s approach to housing delivery based on what we learned from the shelter policy review. Building for the Future capitalizes on the successes of existing housing programs and services, provides improvements where there are gaps in support, and makes changes to programs to better suit the needs of...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I had the opportunity to attend the 2012 Arctic Winter Games in Whitehorse this past March and first of all I want to thank the City of Whitehorse and the organizing committee for excellent games. I want to congratulate Nunavut for their being awarded the Stu Hodgson Award for best sportsmanship.
I was very impressed with our athletes in Whitehorse both on and off the field. On the field they gave it their all. Off the field they were great ambassadors for the Northwest Territories and had many positive comments from a lot of the other families that were there.
We had...
I will follow up, and obviously, as with all the departments in the government, they’re over there monitoring the conversations we have in here, so I’m sure that they’re putting some information together for me right now. I will follow up and see where that went. It’s a very novel idea and it has some merit, but we’d have to follow up on it further.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize a former resident of Aklavik and Inuvik, a good friend of mine, Mr. Frank Edwards Jr., better known as Somoe. Welcome, Somoe.
Thank you. There is always a danger that there are going to be some people that try to take advantage of some of the programs we have to offer. We have to do our part to ensure that this is distributed fairly and to those that are most in need. I think in such small jurisdictions in the Northwest Territories, working with the communities we all know the people in the communities that are in most need, those that are trying to get a good start in life. We feel that this is going to give them that good start, and like I said before, they can either graduate into regular market housing or they...