Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Madam Chair. My understanding of how the government works is assistant deputy ministers are essentially in charge of operations of a department, and I know the Housing Corp's a little different, and then associate deputy ministers are usually deputy ministers in waiting or on terms to eventually take over. Is that kind of the thought with this position, that the associate deputy minister may one day be the president, or is he just here for a term for the sake of the renewal? Can I just get some clarification on really, I don't understand "assistant" and "associate" partially. Thank...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister may have answered my question there but I'll tell you 200 grand for those eight camps was a great deal, and I know many people are running these not necessarily with government support, that they're communitydriven initiatives. But I've talked to some of the organizers and they'd really like to, you know, take these to another level, perhaps fly in elders, fly in people to help support, you know, turn them into bit of kind of an educational aspect as well. And I just would ask the Minister that perhaps the department, you know, with this fund, reach out to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to commend the department on their work to date working with ECE to get the hunter ed program in the schools. I know we're piloting it in nine schools. I also know there's been some work through Bush Kids and other initiatives to have kind of traditional knowledge in schools. But I would really like to have the Minister work with his ECE colleague to get hide camps into schools. Is this something the Minister could look into doing? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The official flower of the NWT is the mountain aven. The official bird is the gyrfalcon. But I suggest that we add an official smell, Mr. Speaker, and that official smell would be the smell of a traditionally tanned moose hide. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the Minister today for his statement on supporting sustainable livelihoods, and I would like to thank the work ENR is doing to support traditional moose hide tanning. I would like to see more of this.

Mr. Speaker, I have had the privilege of helping many people prepare their hides and attending numerous hide...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I'm happy to hear that, and I'm sure I'll have questions for EIA when the time comes.

I guess my other question is there's been some rumors or possibly talk of some sort of corporate restructuring involving some possibly ENR, MACA or Lands. One of the things that I don't quite understand is that lands officers and water resource officers are two different positions. I think they are very ripe to become one position environmental officers. I'll note that lands officers already do water inspections at the diamond mines. So can I just get the Minister to speak to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's my understanding that EIA is currently leading some work to lobby the feds to amend the MVRMA or possibly devolve the MVRMA and pending the outcome of those negotiations, that would then allow ENR to resume work on the Waters Act and Environmental Protection Act. Can I just clarify if that is the case, that we have to wait for that MVRMA work to be done before any further work on waters or environmental protection? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I guess, you know, I find the leasing conversation interesting but, really, at the end of the day I think the solution is we simply need to build more public housing. Every time we build public housing, we actually free up units that we are currently renting. And there's just no doubt the GNWT is the single biggest driver of rent in Yellowknife, both through the number of workers it locates in Yellowknife and the amount it actually pays these companies. So every time we build more public housing, we fix and increase the vacancy rate, which is getting more and more...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I believe the Minister has somewhat alluded to it there. You know, I know the housing waitlist in Yellowknife is hundreds of people long. But I'm just curious whether the plan is we since we brought 24 new units into the portfolio, is this in addition to the Yellowknife housing total amount of units or will we then correspondingly lower the number of units we lease by 24? Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. When providing public housing, the government should not be paying market rent. However, Madam Speaker, as we know, right now in order to get a income housing allowance you must be placed on a public housing waitlist. Why is this? It's because we know providing people housing in public housing we own is cheeper than paying market rent. Yet despite this, presently income assistance is paying market rent for 885 people at a cost of $7.3 million a year. Additionally, our own Housing Corporation is paying another $3 million in market rent to Northview instead of building...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I guess I'm going to say that I will offer no opinions on what I think LHOs in the communities should do. I'll leave that up to community MLAs and them. But I noted in Yellowknife the staff, they're not public servants, and they have quite, you know, high maintenance costs. They're nowhere near the private sector in what it costs to maintain and operate buildings. You know, perhaps that's a good thing, the number of staff they have, if you need to get something fixed in a public housing unit in Yellowknife.

But I'm just wondering if we've done some sort of cost...