Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, I'm hopeful too that at least a draft will get tabled. I think at some point we seem to have kind of lost sight of the goal, which is, you know in our mandate we're committed to adding a hundred new public housing units, which certainly helps, you know, with homelessness. But the goal is not just to add and maintain our public housing stock. The goal is to actually end homelessness, and I mean that under the definition. I often point to the Yellowknife tenyear plan to end homelessness. I point to the fact that Medicine Hat, which has far more people than the...

Housing, housing, housing, Mr. Speaker. It's all we seem to talk about in this House. And, Mr. Speaker, credit is due that this Assembly has delivered more housing money than we have seen in decades, largely thanks to a lot of federal programs that have rolled out to both the GNWT and Indigenous governments. Yet, Mr. Speaker, we have absolutely no sense whether we have made any progress on ending homelessness in this territory, which ultimately is the goal, Mr. Speaker. And I suspect we have not made any progress at all, Mr. Speaker. I suspect, at best, we are trying as hard as we can against...

Yeah, thank you. You know, I get we're probably not going to finish everything up. But can someone just explain to me I mean, there's certain positions where clearly or it seems to me come April 1 you absolutely have to decide, you know, who is the superintendent in a region. To just have two people saying they are this regional superintendent for ECC seems a recipe for disaster. So, you know, how can someone just explain to me how we decide that? Is it a public competition, do we does the deputy minister and the Minister appoint one of the two? Could anyone, in theory, apply; I just want...

Thank you, Madam Chair. When can we expect to see an organizational chart for the new department? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know what, I'm actually glad to hear that. I think we're getting into semantics. When people say end homelessness, they mean that when you go out and count the people on the street, they haven't been chronically homeless usually for a period of about three months. You know, you want to try and get someone back into housing in some sort of form, whether it's transitional, in three months. So I don't want to get into semantics of what ending homelessness does as long as we're somewhat in the same ballpark.

My real question my next question, though, Mr. Speaker...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, it's kind of been a long march to one day the GNWT would have a plan to address homelessness. You kind of think it would be something we'd have in the first place, but I'm hoping that the Premier could give us some good news and update the House on when the strategy to address homelessness will be complete? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This federal agreement, we anticipated it being renewed. So in the past when there was uncertainty, we did have it appropriated through the business planning process and then had to come back and have it reprofiled. So in this case with the anticipated funding, it was just it's not included in the budget but anticipated through sup.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That's funding that's being reduced as time limited funding for child and family services legal fees and just to be resubstantiated as needed.

Yeah, thank you. Just could we get a commitment to have that broken down by percentage, or if someone could even just point me to where I could find that. I've seen that list before, but I haven't quite I know there's a lot of work going on in the renewal and the efficiency side. But I think kind of getting a sense if I had to wager a guess, overtime is by far the biggest and everything else is kind of trailing behind that. But I'd like to know that for a fact, Madam Chair. So if someone could point me to where we could find that or provide it at a later date to committee. Thank you, Madam...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm not sure where exactly, or if, in this budget that the new federal money that we've got under the territorial health transfer shows up. But can someone just I remember the Minister saying, you know, it's not as well, the Minister and every single premier across the country is saying there's not as much as we'd hoped. Can the Minister just confirm whether that money is in this current budget and perhaps one more explanation of exactly how much money we got from the federal government. There was some confusion they were trying to, you know, say there was some...