Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to welcome all visitors to the gallery today. We have some special guests visiting us from the Yukon. We have the Deputy Premier of the Yukon, the Honourable Elaine Taylor; her deputy minister, Murray Arsenault; and from the Premier’s office, Jonas Smith; and I’d also like to welcome a former Member of the House, Mr. Roy Erasmus; and, again, everybody else who’s with us. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. [Translation] I would also like to welcome the Deputy Premier from Yukon. I know that she has the ministry of francophone under her. I know that she has a lot of work, the same as we do, and I want to express my welcome to our House, our Assembly. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize three of my hearts in the gallery today: my loving partner, Ms. Lucyanne Kendo; a wonderful stepdaughter, Brittany Jewel; and my very smart grandson, Kayleb Black-Villeneuve. Welcome to the gallery.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize constituent Roy Erasmus. At least for the next couple of months he’s a constituent of Weledeh. So, welcome to the House.
I’d also like to welcome the visitors from the Yukon. You know, we don’t get nearly enough east-west interaction, so I really appreciate the visitors joining us in the House and visiting Yellowknife. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to welcome a constituent to the House today, Ms. Judy McLeod, and also thank her for all the work that she’s done with our Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services throughout the region. It’s very much appreciated.
I’m not sure if Hilda is still up there or not, but I want to recognize her and just say that I appreciated curling with her in all the government bonspiels over the years, and I just want to say thanks for her welcoming smile every time we walk down the halls to our meetings, especially for the out-of-town MLAs when they come here.
Also, Mr. Murray Arsenault, a one-time Inuvik resident, welcome to the House. To all the other residents and people joining us today, I hope you enjoy the proceedings. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, although I think Hilda is gone, but I did want to mention Hilda. She has been a stalwart person in Yellowknife for many years, beyond her work in the Assembly, so I wanted to recognize her work here and her commitment to the community.
I’d also like to recognize Ms. Elaine Taylor. We have had some meetings over the years. Also all the other representatives here from the Yukon. As Mr. Moses said, it’s great to have communication between Yukon and NWT, Whitehorse and Yellowknife. Welcome to everyone.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. They’ve been recognized a few times, but I certainly wouldn’t mind underscoring it just one more time at least a little further. I’d like to recognize Deputy Minister Arsenault. I’ve gotten to know him over the last few years. I really admire his hard work. He’s had a great relationship with the Northwest Territories and I’m very thankful that we have someone in the Yukon who understands our problems as we learn about theirs. I couldn’t think of a better team to take on the challenges in Ottawa than our good folks in the gallery here today, so thank you for your presence and, also, thank you for being a partner on our side, because we’re certainly on your side too when we challenge Ottawa.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize and thank all the visitors to the Assembly here. I want to name, of course, Hilda. She’s not here, but I also want to thank her. Hilda is family. She’s my first cousin. One of the things that I want to say is when I walk down the hallway into the office, Hilda always says, “No, no, this is how you do it. You’ve got to do this, this and that.” So she keeps me on the straight and narrow. I also wanted to congratulate her on her retirement.
Also, to Mr. Erasmus in the gallery, too, and all the other people from the Yukon for visiting us over in the Northwest Territories. Hopefully, one day we’ll get a chance to visit them over there.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you. I’d also just like to make a comment on Hilda Camirand and what a cheerful good morning we get as we go down the Ministers’ corridor to our meetings in the morning and just for being the encouraging and supportive person that she is. When I look around the staff and when I look around the Members, there are not a lot of people who predate Minister Miltenberger’s and my arrival here. Mr. Schauerte is one of them. Hilda is one of them. There are not very many, and Hilda’s been there for a long time. She’s an institution and much appreciated by everyone.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. I’d like to welcome everybody here in the public gallery. Thank you for taking an interest in our proceedings.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the question to the Minister of the Housing Corporation. Why are there so many empty houses in Fort Good Hope and how many empty houses are there in Fort Good Hope?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Minister of the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My understanding is we have an eight-plex in Fort Good Hope. I believe this is what he’s referring to. That is empty. I think we’re in the process of selling that particular unit. I think we have another eight units that we might be in talks with the local government about taking on these units.
The Minister is correct on the eight-plex that is sitting empty and in the process of selling it in the community. I’m not too sure where it will be going to or which organization or person. It’s been there for a while.
Why is it taking so long to dispose of this empty unit while there are a lot of people on the waiting list? Why are the empty units still sitting there while there are a lot of people on the waiting list to get into these units? What can we do to expedite this situation so that we can put people into houses rather than have them in other houses where overcrowding is a major health issue?
Every community has an allotment of public housing, and as we take the units out of stock, we have a disposal plan. We try to sell off the unit if we can. Those that we dispose of, with the new WSCC regulations we have to do a hazardous material assessment and abatement before we’re able to dispose of those units. So it’s added on a tremendous cost to our ability to dispose of many of these units. The Member and I were having a conversation where, back in the day, they’d just come in with a backhoe, take the unit down and haul it off to the garbage dump. We don’t have that ability anymore. So we’re trying to come up with the funding to… It’s almost double or even triple the cost in some cases, so we’re challenged that way and our aggressive disposal plan is not as aggressive as it used to be. So we’re taking steps to try and address that. Thank you.
Certainly, the Minister and I were speaking this morning on why it’s taking so long to dispose of these empty units, knowing that Fort Good Hope has a long list of potential tenants who want to go into these units and there’s overcrowding. It’s causing health issues; it’s causing social issues and people want to get into these units.
Is the Minister actively looking at an expedient process where these empty units can either be retrofitted by the local community organizations or be torn down? Like the Minister said, in the old days it was good because you could go in there, knock the houses down and build a new one. Now we seem to have more bureaucratic red tape costing us more, so it’s more difficult to replace these units or sell them off to the local government. People want these empty units filled either by building new ones or tearing them down.
Is the Minister looking at an expedient process for this to happen in Fort Good Hope?
The eight-plex that’s in Fort Good Hope, I’ll get the update on that and share it with the Member. I’m not sure where we’re at with that.
As far as the other units go, I’d have to get an update on those. If there are some there that we deem are write-offs, we will sell them if people want to take them on and try to do some renovations themselves. We’ve had that done in the past. I’ll get an update on all of the units that are in Fort Good Hope and the status and where we’re at with those.
Again, we’re challenged by the fact that we have to do an assessment and remediate a lot of these units before we dispose of them. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is a TV program called Clean House where they come in and they take all the junk out of the house and people sometimes have a hard time letting go of some of their junk in the house. It’s almost like this Housing Corporation is letting go of some of their junk in the House here. So, I know this can be done because in my hometown of Tulita the Housing actually did a very good job of turning over these empty units to the community corporation real estate. They actually bought these units, fixed them up and rented them out.
Can this happen in Fort Good Hope where the Housing Corporation can go and say these units can be turned over to the community? The community is waiting to purchase these, build them and get these young couples into these houses. That’s what they’re waiting for. So, can the Minister clean house on this issue?
Thank you. We’d love to clean house, but again, we’re faced with some of the challenges of the proper assessment and remediation. We would be more than pleased to sell these units to a community group as we did in Tulita and they took on responsibility of those units. I think they were in the process of renovating them and they would rent them out and they would collect the revenues. We’re more than willing to partner with communities where we have a lot of these vacant units, and if there’s an opportunity for them to take those off our hands and fix them themselves then we have other opportunities to possibly look at putting new replacement public housing in the communities. We’re faced with many challenges and we’ve continued to try and address those. We understand that it is an issue across the NWT, so we’re looking at taking on that challenge head on. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Public Works and Services. I’d like to follow up on his statement yesterday.
Yesterday the Minister gave a statement outlining some of the things we have done to reduce energy consumption, and I was pleased to hear the progress that’s been made. However, until a long overdue energy efficiency act is in place, our performance as a territory will be hit and miss.
We know that an act is not about to happen during the life of this Assembly, but the Minister at least promised a discussion paper towards such an act, but where is the promised document for our review? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister of Public Works, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have the information here in the House with me on how far along the department is in producing a discussion paper for the Assembly. I will talk to Public Works today to find out if I can get an update for the Members in the House and provide that early next week. Thank you.
I’m not quite sure what to say here. The Minister seems to be unaware of this, and yet this is fundamental to reducing our energy costs and so on.
Will the promised discussion paper be ready… I can’t even ask the rest of my question so I’ll have to stop here, Mr. Speaker. The Minister doesn’t have any information. I’ll have to say I’m very disappointed. We need our government to be on top of these important issues. Mahsi.
Thank you. That was more of a comment. Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just following up to my Member’s statement earlier, and there are some really good Ministers’ statements here as well. One was from Justice in terms of using an elder in some of our work that we’re going to be doing in the traditional healing and enlisting Aboriginal elders in the aspects of their cultures and traditions, focusing on traditional healing in the corrections facility. Also, when I mentioned that meeting that we had in Inuvik, we had discussions of the regional wellness councils, and elders who were there spoke up and said that they would really love to be on those regional councils, as well, but they had a lot of concerns, and I guess, just the whole aspect of having that regional meeting.
I’d like to ask the Minister responsible for Seniors, what is his department doing to create more regional meetings like this throughout the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a fairly positive working relationship with the NWT Seniors’ Society and we have provided funding for some meetings and some of the functions that they’re undertaking.
With respect to facilitating the exact type of meeting that the Member is talking about, I will talk to the department to find out where we are with those kinds of supports and I will get back to the Member. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
In terms of an action plan, I know there is a Seniors’ Handbook that’s out in the communities. Can I ask the Minister, is there an action plan for seniors? As he heard here today, there are housing issues and even issues in terms of long-term care facilities and beds. Is there an action plan for our senior population over the next five, the next 10 years? One of my colleagues mentioned the increased population, you know, five years from now, 11 years from now, even further down the road. Is there an action plan to address some of these issues moving forward? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We don’t have an action plan per se. What we do have is Our Elders: Our Communities framework which focuses on seven different priority areas: healthy and active aging; home and community care services; integrated and coordinated services across the continuum; getting people to work together, as the Member has described; caregiver supports; elder-responsive communities is another initiative that we’re working on with communities and partners; and ensuring that there’s sustainable best practices available for all of the care providers and residents of the Northwest Territories.
We are also working on the development of an NWT Continuing Care Service Delivery Action Plan, which will focus on facilities and where we need to be building facilities, recognizing the large increase of seniors we are going to be seeing over the next number of years. This project is going to help us figure out when, where and how to build facilities to meet those needs. So, there are a number of different things happening, Mr. Speaker.
My experience that I had at the meeting over the summer, just being in attendance – I wasn’t there for all the three days, but I sat in and listened to some of the discussions – and the passion and concern of these elders speaking up and not really having the confidence. Within government and other areas of leadership, something needs to be done so that with the Continuing Care Action Plan that the Minister is discussing, would he welcome some of the senior populations from the regions to sit in on the discussion of an action plan to help to address the real issues in the small communities and at the regional level? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As I’ve indicated previously, we have a really positive working relationship with the NWT Seniors’ Society, who represents seniors from across the Northwest Territories and the board actually has representatives from people from across the Territories. We work closely with them and are always seeking their input and guidance. I am happy to meet with seniors’ societies across the Northwest Territories to get their input. The services and programs we are talking about are ultimately for them and it’s important to make sure they are engaged. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we come to an end in the 17th Legislative Assembly, would the Minister responsible ensure that this is a priority of the 18th Assembly? Would he commit that our seniors’ issues, such as elder abuse, housing and services in some of the small communities are a priority in the 18th Assembly so when the new government comes in, they can hit the road running and address some of the issues our elders are dealing with? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
This is obviously an incredibly important issue in the Northwest Territories, especially recognizing the rate in which our seniors populations are increasing. It’s something I have asked to be included on the Cabinet’s transition document so it is brought forward to the future government. If I’m fortunate enough to be back, whether I’m on that side of the House or on this side of the House, it’s still a priority for me and would continue to be a priority for me. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
