Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Previously, I know a number of local housing organizations have expressed their interest to be able to go and get money from the federal government. I know the Yellowknife Housing Authority would love to be able to submit to these various federal funding pools, but they are not permitted to. Can we just explain why we won't let these organizations get money? Thank you.

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...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, another kind of anomaly is they all somewhat have different appointment mechanisms. Yellowknife specifically, the mayor and a group of Yellowknife MLAs get together and we decide who is on the Yellowknife Housing Authority. Others are directly appointed by the Minister. Some have a bit more community input. This is according to some ministerial directive out of the 90s, I believe. But I really don't think it's my role to decide who's on the Yellowknife Housing Authority, and in fact, I would like them to be at arm's length nonprofit that perhaps some sort of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I guess so there's kind of this weird thing going on where there's local housing organizations and then there's authorities and some, in fact, are nonprofits registered under the Society's Act, and I'll note that those ones actually can't be investigated by the ombud, which is a weird kind of mistake that was made in that schedule.

But is there any actual reason for this difference between some of them being nonprofits and some being, you know, essentially creatures of statute under the act? Is this something we're going to correct, or is there actually a reason for...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks, committee, for indulging me. I just had one more question. I know ENR is at the technical working group on at least one piece of legislation. I'm just wondering if we provide Indigenous governments money to support their work being there, and if so, how much, or whether that's an EIA question. Thank you.