Merci, Monsieur le President. My question is for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. I visited Jean Marie River and the Minister on August the 11th to see some of the flood damage. Can the Minister provide an update as to the status of funding expended to date by this government in Jean Marie River and efforts to carry out any of that work from other sources. Merci, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Minister responsible for MACA.
Thank you. First of all, I'd like to thank the Member for touring my riding. It was greatly appreciated. And the community of Jean Marie greatly appreciated him stopping in to sit there. I also have to give a shout out to the Member from Hay River South. He was very much involved in that as well.
So in regards to how much money we spent right now, presently, as of September 30th -- sorry, I just had a mental block there -- we spent $1.7 million for the flood recovery for activities in there. We are projecting that the total for the 2021-2022 fiscal year, we'll spend approximately about $6 million in total.
The GNWT is making a claim for reimbursement for flood-related costs to the Government of Canada through the federal disaster financial assistance arrangement, and Municipal and Community Affairs has engaged Public Safety Canada throughout this. So they're not being surprised about it; we are actually being proactive and saying here's what our costs are and, you know, is this something that we can or cannot claim through the process. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that response.
The community of Jean Marie River was particularly hard hit by flooding as we all know. Can the Minister tell us if and when the water treatment plant was put back into operation and what arrangements were made for clean water for the community before that. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to answer the last part of the question first, and then we'll go from there.
So when the flood hit, the leadership from the department and local governments from Hay River and Yellowknife provided bottled water to the community. So we were bringing in bottled water to help address that issue. Then as the ferry was kicked in in Fort Simpson and people were moved back into their homes, or they were still in their homes that weren't impacted by the floods, we were bringing the water from Fort Simpson, the water truck.
Now we continue to do that. In July and August, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs and contractors worked on improving getting the reservoir up and running and as of September 30th -- or September, it is now operational. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. Good to hear that the water treatment plant is up and going again.
I noted in my statement the housing closest to the Mackenzie and Jean Marie rivers was particularly heavily damaged. The previous Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs had promised publicly that people would be in accommodations, be back in their communities before winter.
What's the status of the assessment or repair work for both private and publicly owned housing in Jean Marie River, and are people back in their own homes. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
I'd like to thank the Member for asking these questions. I think these are questions I asked weekly with the staff on it.
So the status is basically we've been working on it. For the homes that we're able to repair, we're hoping to having everything as of December 17th. For the ones that may or may not be back into their home, we brought in a camp. So we have two camps. One for the Elders, and one for the family. When we were asking the community about getting a camp in there, we gave them some options. They provided the option -- they selected the options, and that's why the camp we have set up as we have it here.
In regards to homes that are beyond repair, what we've done is we've given them a number of options of how we're going to move forward on that. And then the community members made that decision. It wasn't us as government saying this is what you have. We said, here's option A, here's the consequences if you pick this, option B, C, D, and then the community members made a decision.
I'd just like to share a quick story. I had one individual who was going to do it but decided that the home meant too much more so he -- they have actually gone back to building it, fixing it up themselves. So as in regards to the public, there's four units. My understanding they're in the process, if they're not already done. Housing has done the work on them, and we're moving forward on that. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. Clearly, people in Jean Marie River, particularly the Elders, like to be close to the rivers. That brings some risk with more extreme events which will increase with the climate crisis.
Can the Minister tell us whether there have been any discussions or plans to relocate or move some or all of the community of Jean Marie River, and what support is our government giving. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we've been working with the residents. Some people want their homes to be raised. We're able to do that. Some of them have actually looked at potentially moving to another location. And with the homes that we are replacing, we're making sure that we can lift them up and move them should they wish to move to another location in the town.
Very much the community wants to stay close to the river. We have some locations that we're working with them. But we've also made a commitment to work with them to come up with a plan, a community plan, based on their needs and what they want. So, again, it's very much about working with them on this. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake. Oh, that's fine.
