Wendy Bisaro

Thanks, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. The Minister mentioned some construction that’s going on, and I know that the City of Yellowknife has earmarked about $70,000 for capital costs to assist with the building.

I’d like to know from the Minister if there is an opportunity to take some of that money that’s earmarked for capital and for construction and put that into programs.

Mr. Chair, if you want to go to somebody else first, that’s fine.

Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate that. It is unfortunate that we don’t have a specific person looking out for homeless people in our communities. In Yellowknife, though, we do have a day shelter.

I’d like to ask the Minister, in terms of the Day Shelter, what programs are available at the Day Shelter right now that can assist clients to improve their mental health?

Thanks to the Minister. These issues or these pillars that the department is working on, can I get some sense of when they might be completed, when committee might have a chance to look at them and give some feedback? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. It’s great to hear the commitment from the Minister because the responsibility for homelessness is not at a municipal level, it is at a territorial level. So I’m glad to hear the commitment and willingness is there to consider providing services.

To the Minister, Yellowknife is taking on this challenge. Yellowknife has a fairly large number of homeless people, but there are homeless people probably in every one of our communities.

What exists in communities outside of Yellowknife to treat homeless people who have a mental illness? Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for that. I move we report progress.

---Carried

Thanks to the Minister for the clarification. I understand it better now and I have no further questions. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for that. I’m really glad to hear that there’s a commitment on the part of the GNWT and I’m also glad to hear that it’s more than one department that is involved, because in order for this project to be successful, it will involve more than just the Health department. Housing and Justice for sure have to be in there.

To make this program successful, there needs to be services for the homeless. Once they are housed, there needs to be services in order to assist them with the other things that have created their homelessness.

I’d like to know from the Minister, will the...

Mr. Chair, my other question has to do with the day shelters. We certainly have a day shelter here in the City of Yellowknife. I believe there’s at least one other day shelter elsewhere in another community. One of the things that were a problem when the Day Shelter was previously operated under another operator was a lack of programming. We kind of touched on this earlier, but what analysis has the department done with this new operator? There was a bit of a lull where the Day Shelter was not operating, and I think it was an opportunity to do some analysis and to do an evaluation of the...

Thanks, Madam Chair. I just have one question here. It has to do with the amounts for the health and social service authorities funding. The amount has increased from ‘14-15 revised estimates to the main estimates for this year ‘15-16 and that’s all well and good. I appreciate that costs have increased. Over the years we have had considerable conversations about the expenses and the expenditures incurred by various health and social service authorities. There have been three or four authorities that regularly overspend their budgets and there have been great discussions about why they...