Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This question is for Premier. Mr. Speaker, this is international news. July 2022, Pope Francis is going to be in Canada to make formal apology to the Indigenous people for the trauma experienced in residential school.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to know what is the GNWT plan in this process. What action assistance will the government do to help the survivors and families. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Monfwi. Honourable Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think it's the right thing for the Pope to come to the Northwest Territories, to Canada to speak to the people that are survivors. I think that the Pope does deserve to give or the people deserve to get an apology from the Pope. However, the GNWT, Mr. Speaker, is not taking a forefront role in this visit from the Pope, but we are here to support Indigenous governments in any actions that they wish to pursue as this work goes forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you. Well, I was hoping that the GNWT would acknowledge and recognize the trauma the Indigenous people experienced. And we have a lot there's a lot of mental health issues. And I was hoping the GNWT would acknowledge and recognize.
And this is where I was going I was hoping that they were going to send delegates. The Indigenous government council from NWT, I was hoping that they will be attending and that they will be in charge of leading, bringing delegates to Edmonton, and that they will be paying for the full cost for people attending because that's I think that's the only right thing to do is for this government is to recognize and acknowledge that the trauma the Indigenous people experienced. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That's just for comment. She doesn't need to reply. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Monfwi. I'll give the Premier an opportunity to respond. Honourable Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, recognizing that the GNWT does stand with the Indigenous governments on the actions with this, my understanding is the Dene Nation has taken the lead in this work. And I will make a commitment that I will reach out to the leader of the Dene Nation, Grand Chief I believe, to be able to see what kind of assistance that he needs from the GNWT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Honourable Premier. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, further to the questions just asked by my colleague from Yellowknife North, the Minister responded sorry. These questions are for the Minister of Housing NWT. The Minister responded that they found issues with the plan. But the building was already built by that point. I've been in it. I had the honour of going to see the building with the Minister of Housing NWT. And it's a beautiful, beautiful building, and I think, you know, every community in the territory would love one.
But the building was already built, Mr. Speaker. So why were the issues with the plan not caught before the building was built. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for Housing NWT.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for the question as well too. Those issues were discovered after the building was built. Right now we are dealing with those with this within the corporation within Housing NWT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, what lessons has Housing NWT learned result of this, or what are they doing to ensure that this does not happen again. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Once that I discovered that we had issues with the final completion of this building, looking at the plans that had come forward, and looking at the comments made by the sorry. I just I can't remember at the top of my head. The building inspectors. The final inspections, we did have issues with that after the building was constructed.
I brought this back to Housing NWT. And we need to work more closely when we are looking at these contracts, we are putting them out for tender. Contractors need to be better supported. And looking at the phases where they are constructing our buildings, our assets, we need to be further more involved so we could avoid something like this happening again in the future. It's really unfortunate that we had gotten to this stage. But housing needed to be involved a lot more. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. The question was already asked, but I'll ask it again. What is the anticipated additional cost of this, and is this expected to come forward in a sup or be funded from within. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't have those details. I'm not prepared to be answering these questions right now. But I'm just going on the briefing that I've had recently. I don't have those final numbers. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My final question is, will the Minister provide this information to Members on this side of the House. My concern is that Members recently negotiated additional funding for the NWT Housing, and the intent of that money is not to go towards stuff like this; it's to open up more housing and to repair houses that need repair so that people can get housing. And so I'm hoping that this doesn't come at the cost of that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I hear the Member when it you know, we're looking at putting more housing on the ground. And I want to make sure that, you know, I'm clear when we are looking at the housing delivery throughout the Northwest Territories that we are committed to putting those units on the ground.
And I do appreciate the advocation on the other side, providing additional funding to this portfolio for us to enhance our housing delivery as well.
But in this case for the nineplex in Fort Good Hope, it had come up with a number and several issues once the building was completed. And there are further technical issues as well where we had to get outside contractors to come in as well.
The community has expressed a lot of interest. They have expressed further updates as well. We do have a housing waitlist. I know the impacts of a nineplex in a smaller community is it's really top of the discussion at the ground level, and people are waiting to be moving into these units as well. I do understand the urgency to get this nineplex up and going and having the transfer of elders into these units as well too. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I apologize to the Minister of MACA for not providing these questions, but I've got to take one more shot at plugging questions.
Mr. Speaker, the floodplain in Hay River has just been expanded both in Hay River and K’atlodeeche. Has the Minister of MACA and his department considered how the department will proceed with future mitigation support measures based on this new reality. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Hay River South. Minister responsible for MACA.
I'd like to take it under notice being the last question of the day here. I respect the Member.
Yes, in the conversations with the Member on this is this is part of our learning process. We learnt from our last flood and the situation from Little Buffalo, Jean Marie, Fort Simpson, and Fort Good Hope, and a little bit Aklavik. So we learnt from that. We started working on that.
But as we move forward, we are going to be doing this in the future. This is part of our learning experience. Thank you. And it will be addressed in the next unfortunate flood situation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I realize we're just now completing, you know, assessments, but it's important to begin to look forward. And what, if anything, is the department doing to start talking mitigation. I'm hoping that, you know, they keep talking about learning from one flood to another. So, you know, after this flood, I'm hoping they learned quite a bit and they have some type of idea of how they're going to look at mitigation. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I said before, we work with the residents; we work with the communities. As well as we move up the river, we start working with the communities as well that have who weren't impacted so far this year. But we are working with them. We are seeing what there's some needs.
One of the questions that was proposed [sic] to me today was if a resident is impacted and we have to do some mitigation for them but the resident next door doesn't, what can we do with that. So we are going to reach out to the federal government. We're going to work with the communities.
We're also working with the residents to see if they wish to move. And if they do wish to move, then that there is part of the process there.
So each community has some challenges, and we work with them throughout the process. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the reality is is that, you know, you might have one House that got hit by flooding and the one next to it didn't, and for what you know, for whatever reason, and, you know, the people now who are probably have homes that are below the flood risk elevations that were set years ago, they may be looking for supports. So will any support be provided to those in the floodplain that want to access funds to put in place mitigation measures, such as rising their raising their homes or, you know, berms or whatever to protect their homes, and will moved flood risk elevations be set as part of this process. Thank you.
Thank you. 3 A, B, C, and D questions. I'll try to get them all answered here. And if I don't, I apologize to the Member.
Unfortunately, no. If the residents have not been impacted by the disaster, then we don't have funding for them. But it's something that we are going to reach out to the federal government to have that conversation with them, to ask them if we can make that part of the federal government's program. So we are going to work with them on that there.
And I apologize. I missed the other questions. So you may have to ask them again. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, climate change and flooding has been a reality here for the last while. So I'd ask the Minister will he consider bolstering his staff complement to deal with climate change and flooding. So, you know, what I'm looking for is, you know, we need expertise on climate change, on hydrology, and flood mitigation. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we actually just hired our climate change specialist in the department. He has vast experience in climate change, and he is now in place with the department. In regards to the bolstering other staff, like, we've had our EMO staff; we've created five new positions; we have three positions at headquarters. So we're working on that.
With ENR and that department there, we've also worked on creating and finding positions that will help deal with this. We've bolstered some of our staff as the government across the Northwest Territories. So we are looking at where we can help and that.
And as the Member said, climate change is the reality. We're living it. Not when it's going to happen. We're living it. It's impacting us. And so we're trying to move forward on this. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Colleagues, our time for oral questions has expired. Honourable Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to go back to recognition of visitors in the gallery.
Thank you, Honourable Premier.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent. Thank you.
Recognition of visitors in the gallery. Honourable Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to recognize the former Premier Bob McLeod, who is in the gallery. Today the Legislative Assembly will be unveiling his portrait to join the other previous Premiers.
Premier McLeod dedicated his life and career to making the Northwest Territories a better place for residents and businesses. He worked in civil service for 28 years, including serving as a deputy minister in three different departments as well as secretary to Cabinet during the 15th Assembly.
He was first elected in 2007 as the MLA for Yellowknife South. In his first term as MLA, he was elected to Cabinet and became the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment.
Premier McLeod was acclaimed in 2011, easy ride, and put his name forward for Premier, defeating two other candidates to become our 12th Premier of the Northwest Territories. In 2015, Premier McLeod made history, becoming the first twoterm Premier of the Northwest Territories.
Premier McLeod was always willing to do what was needed to make the Northwest Territories a better place for current and future generations, and we thank him for his dedication to the people of the Northwest Territories.
Mr. Speaker, on a personal note, though, I have nothing but respect for Premier McLeod and I am honoured that I was a Member of his Cabinet. Premier McLeod never told me what not to do. He never had to. When he felt I was off track, he only had to give me "the look", and I knew he was not happy. Mr. Speaker, I know Premier McLeod is a quiet, humble man, and probably not comfortable with being formally recognized in the House. So I purposely am not looking at him in the gallery for fear of once again getting "the look" he's so famous for. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Honourable Premier. Recognition of visitors in the gallery. Member for Deh Cho.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I too would like to applaud former Premier of NWT, a twoterm Premier, Mr. Bob McLeod, and I applaud the Premier for her tribute to Mr. McLeod for his service to the Northwest Territories. And also the fact that Bob McLeod is from Fort Providence. His friends and everybody lived there. There was a rumour that his prolific hockey career began on an ice puddle with one skate and a willow stick. So I believe he carried it on to his son, Warren, who is also here, and to his grandsons. I think Carter is down in a recognized hockey school so we wish him the best. I hope to see him in the NHL at some point. And from my aunt's, on my extended family's side, he's in the building somewhere, he's the Metis president, Mr. Clifford McLeod, and also Languages Commissioner, Brenda Gauthier, is here with us. They're all from Fort Providence. And Lorraine Whitman who is also here, moved back to Providence after a long GNWT career. I'd like everyone to join me in a round of applause for all these people in the visitors gallery. Mahsi.
Recognition of visitors in the gallery. Member for Thebacha.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too would like to recognize former Premier McLeod and his wonderful wife Melody. I graduated with this couple from high school, and so I know all the secrets of the past.
And I also want to thank Premier McLeod. When I was in leadership with the Salt River First Nation, Mr. McLeod and other ministers, that are still here in this House, helped that file greatly, and I really appreciate that leadership. Thank you so much.
Recognition of visitors in the gallery. Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm glad that I ran out to use the washroom because I was able to actually look back at the gallery, and I would like to recognize Father Joe Daley, one of my constituents, here in the gallery. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Great Slave. Recognition of visitors in the gallery. Member for Hay River North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I also want to recognize my former colleague, former Premier Bob McLeod. And now being on this side of the House as a Minister, I also want to apologize to the Member, former Premier; I'm getting my comeuppance. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Hay River North. Recognition of visitors in the gallery. Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too would like to recognize our former Premier. Although I was not in his Cabinet, or in his Assembly, you know, I've heard a lot of great things about him and his leadership. And welcome to his family as well.
But I'd also like to recognize Shannon McLeod. Her and I went to the Aurora College, graduated from the nursing program. And she's still doing that and now I'm doing this. So maybe I can convince her to come down on the floor with me. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Recognition of visitors in the gallery. Member for Yellowknife South.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would also like to recognize Melody and Bob McLeod. They continue to be residents of Yellowknife South. I didn't have the honour or the pleasure of working in this House at the same time as Bob McLeod, but I can say that the very first time I ever walked down the executive hallway was with the gracious welcome of the then Premier to welcome me into his office and give me a few words of wisdom for which I was always very grateful. So welcome back.
Thank you, Member.
