Wendy Bisaro

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...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a number of issues. There always are a huge number of issues with this department and most are comments. I don’t need the Minister to respond. I will try and ask my questions when I get to the page on detail.

I want to start off with the issue of continuing care. We did get a report from the department, from the Minister, but it did not commit to an action plan, and that’s a concern for me. There doesn’t seem to be, at least not that we’ve seen on paper, a cohesive, coordinated effort towards care for our seniors. From what I can gather, the mentality seems to be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. Yes, affordability in Yellowknife is the major issue in housing and in my community. At this point, I looked at the NWT Housing Corp website. There’s no indication that this program will end.

So I’d like to know from the Minister, it’s been two years, what are the intentions of the Housing Corp? How long will this program continue? Do they intend to continue it and for how long? Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. So, if I understood the Minister correctly, that’s 68 or 70 out of a possible 150. That’s unfortunate. I would have hoped that the program would be oversubscribed.

I’d like to ask the Minister, when is the two-year anniversary date of this program and will the Housing Corporation be doing a formal review, a formal evaluation of the program at that time? Thank you.