Julian Morse

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I want to dig in a little more into a line of questioning that the Member for Inuvik Boot Lake was getting into. So the first question I wanted to ask is it sounds like there's a fair number of builds planned for the coming year and yet infrastructure investment is listed as $13 million. So can the Minister or her staff kind of help me understand what money is actually going out the door? Maybe it is just $13 million, but I thought I heard $33 million is going out the door, we've got $60 million sitting there, so if I could just kind of get a better understanding of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, just a quick one. I note on the budget that between 2023, 2024 and 2025, Habitat for Humanity's contribution ended. I can probably answer that question for myself that it's that the CMHC National CoInvestment Fund concluded, but I guess the question that I do want to bring to the department is is there planned funding in the future for Habitat for Humanity; what's the department doing in terms of working with this organization for their next set of builds?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. One thing I do want to note on this page is just I am very happy to see that we didn't make any cuts that I can see to these homelessness programs. That's absolutely what I want to see, and I was quite pleased to see that there's been a fairly significant increase to the Northern Pathways to Housing program. Can the Minister just speak to what those funding increases are going to be utilized for.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And thank you very much to the Minister. I really appreciate you pushing the department on this. I'm very excited to have both of those highly informative documents well, I hope they're highly informative, because I and I just want to emphasize the importance of those in making decisions going forward. I've been speaking in the House a fair bit about our infrastructure deficit that we have in the Northwest Territories, both private and public, but we got to focus on what we're in control of here at GNWT. But until we kind of quantify this problem and come up...

Thank you. That's it for me on this one. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to ask about this Western Arctic Research Centre. I know that it was noted -- sorry? Oh, we're just on the first line; okay, I'm sorry. I thought we were going page by page. Apologies, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. And, yeah, I think this is one that I want to kind of maybe follow up with the department a bit more sort of outside of the budget deliberations. I just wanted to get some questions on the floor about it. But I am interested in learning more about what the department's doing, how it's capturing the benefits. This one's important to me. But I'll leave my questions on this budget item as that for now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I was going to do an acknowledgement for Dave Hurley today but being the selfless guy that he is, he asked that I instead highlight the important work Habitat for Humanity is doing in the NWT. So that is what I am speaking about today.

Habitat for Humanity Northwest Territories is a non-profit organization working toward a North where everyone has a safe and decent place to live. Established in 2013, the NWT affiliate is one of the youngest in the country. Their mission is to build strength, stability, and self-reliance through affordable homeownership for...

Okay, thank you. That's interesting, it kind of counters my understanding. I was under the impression that with relation to employment opportunities, ITI was playing a role. I understand there's some kind of coordination committee related to it that ITI is partnering in. So I wanted to ask about that, how it's going, how the department sees itself in that role with relation to the fact that, you know, this department also has a division that's managing economic diversification and maximizing opportunities there. So I was hoping to ask questions about that. So maybe the department can clarify a...

Yeah, thank you. No, I'm not really speaking to the pathfinder program. And maybe I'll give a little bit more detail so the Minister can understand what I'm getting at. So there's been quite a bit of talk in the past little while about the opportunities that mine remediation has for employment in the territory and just ensuring that we are capturing the benefits from this activity, but namely, the Giant Mine remediation project was going to be -- you know, it's upwards of $4 million now that's going to be spent in the territory. And my question is if this is the department to be asking...