Denny Rodgers

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Hopefully with our spanking new budget and our $50 million, we can get some of these boarded up units in Inuvik ready for some of these families to go in and enjoy life the way they should.

My final question, Mr. Speaker, is that would the department or has the department considered looking at -- and I'm not sure where the landlord is on this -- but, you know, purchasing this building, taking 100 percent ownership of this building, taking 100 percent responsibility to get this building up to where it needs to be? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, following up on my Member's statement regarding the conditions in the Nova Apartment building, I'd like to ask the Minister of housing what housing has been doing and what they plan to do to ensure that the security of the building, first and foremost, has been managed and the conditions are improved. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate that. And I know the Minister is well aware of what's happening up there. I know she has very close ties to Inuvik and is very respected in Inuvik.

Would the Minister consider in the short-term, you know, if possible, relocating some of -- at least the families and the elders out of that building until such time as that their work's been completed to get this building to where it needs to be? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I had hoped not to have to make this Member's statement once again in this House; I think I've made it a couple of times. Mr. Speaker, it's dealing with the issue of Nova Apartments in the community of Inuvik in my riding.

Mr. Speaker, I still get weekly emails, messages, and calls regarding the standard of living in the building. Messages are often accompanied by photos, sometimes videos, showing the often horrendous living conditions and the common areas of this building. Often there are videos of altercations within the building, violence, doors being...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with the permission of the Moses family to remember the late Winston Moses, a respected elder and friend to all to the town of Inuvik.

Winston's family said the world got a little brighter when their dad, grandfather, uncle, and friend Winston John Moses was born on April 6th, 1944, in Old Crow, Yukon. In his early years, Winston was raised by his sister Mary Lazarus Charlie and his godparents Ellen and Robert Booth Senior. Winston attended residential school in Old Crow, Aklavik, and then Inuvik. He later attended vocational school in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we've had a lot of conversation around this issue. We've taken it back to our ridings for sure. I've had conversations with members in my riding. It ranged from agnostic, where it doesn't matter, it doesn't work anyway, to we want to see Northerners first, it should be about Indigenous people, and I've had also some people who are P2s coming in, and P2s, I've had a conversation with who have, by the way, been gainfully employed because they allegedly have letters after their name where they've got the education, they've been working in the North a long time...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we're coming to the end of a very long session. But it's been interesting to say the least. We've had some interesting discussions in this House, and we've had some interesting discussions in our committees as well. But oftentimes we forget the backbone of what allows us to do this work, and that's our staff and I'd like just to stand today and to recognize the hardworking staff both on with Cabinet, I'm sure, but certainly from our AOC side, from our committee side, all our committee clerks, and the staff that work behind the scenes to ensure that we get...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Excuse me, we're going to have to start replacing our water with red bull if we keep having these long days.

Mr. Speaker, as one of my colleagues have said, my colleague from Range Lake, we spent over 20 hours on -- 22, sorry, yes. So I'm going to touch on some of the negotiated items in my response today. I won't go through them all; I'm going to leave that to the Minister as she's going to obviously articulate those when she speaks to the bill. But I want to talk a little more about the process, Mr. Speaker, and how we got here and why are we here, I guess, Mr. Speaker...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, first I'd like to recognize two hardworking pages from the Inuvik Boot Lake riding, Ms. Caitlyn Wright and Mr. Wilhem Jellema who have been here working all this week, and I'd like to thank them for their hard work. And I'd also like to recognize Mr. Loutitt. I had an opportunity to work with Mr. Loutitt a little in a previous life, and maybe we never always saw eye to eye but certainly always had great respect and appreciated all the hard work he had done on behalf of GNWT. And to echo my friend from Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Loutitt, go Packers.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I apologize; I was getting ahead of myself as we often do.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to again thank the -- certainly thank the Members of AOC. I mean, it's been an interesting couple of weeks for sure as we've deliberated on this budget and negotiated on this budget and, as the Minister said, I'll certainly speak more to it once we have the main estimates in front of committee tomorrow.

I would like, again, to thank Members of AOC for their direction, for certainly working collaboratively to work towards our common goal and thank Cabinet for their support as well. The housing...