Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I do share the view that it's clear that our problems started with the 17th Assembly, Madam Speaker, but I will address my comments today to the Minister of Finance for the 19th Assembly.

Firstly, I believe this budget is lacking in two areas. One is more money for NGOs. I know this budget contains some increases for our nongovernment organizations, which was a result of the last budgets negotiations, and I thank the Minister of Finance and all the departments for their work on that, but I am concerned that this is simply set out to be a onetime funding. I spoke with...

Yeah, thank you. And can someone just help me understand. My understanding is that Housing First currently also operates out of Northview through leasing. But I'm just wondering if those are we hold those leases or the nonprofit does, or whether that is anything to do with the housing corp.? Thank you.

What? That was a question there.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. You know, admittedly I have to delve into that report. And I know we always throw around these numbers of billions of dollars to get our stock up to where it should be. I'm just curious, you know, we have a budget here with a $30 million increase and that's good. But do we have kind of a monetary figure of you know, in an asset management plan if you the last question was how are we going to pay for this or what is it going to cost. I'm just the bare maintenance, according to replacing that 1,300 unit number, how much money or additional money we need? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My questions are for the next section.

Yes, thank you, Madam Speaker. You know, it's back to that chicken and egg problem. No one is going to tell you it's a rightsbased cabin if it means they all of a sudden have to start paying taxes and lease fees and they're presently not doing that. And we can't exempt them from taxes and lease fees unless we identify a definition of whether it's a rightsbased cabin. So this is why this issue has not been solved. I think at the very least, there are a number of obviously rightsbased cabins where they were told to get a lease, they perhaps did not understand what that meant, they perhaps got...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I spoke in my statement today how I think cabins are really a bellwether for how settling land claims are going and, you know, we've seen a number of court cases over the years. I think one of the main problems is that if you have a if you're an Indigenous person and you're using a cabin for rightsbased purposes, you're treated just like anyone else. You have to get the same leases, pay the same taxes, and follow all the same conditions.

So I'm wondering if the Premier will work to create some sort of different tenure for those rightsbased cabins, to put them in a...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I do not believe that this territory can move forward on settling land claims without first sorting out the issues of rightsbased cabins. And, Madam Speaker, this is a bit of a catch-22 in that the cleanest solution to settling rightsbased cabins is settling land claims, because once an Indigenous government has their land and their cabins are on it then they can sort that out with their membership. Yet, Madam Speaker, we have heard time and time again, in many meetings with Indigenous governments, on no matter what the subject, quite often it comes back around to...

No, just I hope we can find some creative ways to, you know, slowly diversify the way we are leasing and, you know, work with some smaller landlords. I don't even think it's you know, there's some fourplexes in town I think we could probably try and lease. And, you know, if you get something like a fourplex with separate entrances, you're not going to have people selling crack in the hallways and, you know, you're not going to need security. So I think with some creativity, we can diversify this. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's be remiss not to mention my favourite landlord Northview, who I note since we lease from them we're now sharing security costs at one of their buildings. And (a) I don't really want to head down a path where we have to add security guards to all of our public housing units. We certainly cannot afford to do that. And I'll note security guards don't house people so there's money probably better spent. But I guess my point here is are we going out to retender any of these leases any time soon? And I'll note if we're going to do that, we're going to have to do it in real...