Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Premier, who is also the Minister for Executive and Indigenous Affairs. Does the government keep any inventory of contracts for essential social services and housing that are delivered by nonprofits in our communities?
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. Mr. Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, there is no centralized collection of those. There is a number of departments and agencies with contracts and contributions with nonprofits, but I can say that the as part of our homelessness strategy, A Way Home, the integrated services delivery team is tasked with compiling those into a central repository. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So that's great news. I'm also wondering does the government have a sense of how much turnover there is amongst the nonprofits who are actually taking on these contracts for essential social services and housing? So another way (audio) same question might be are there lots of different NGOs available and willing to take on these contracts, or is it the same ones over and over again doing this year after year consistently? If that makes sense. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So the government has relationships with the NGOs and so is aware of the turnover within NGOs and even just personally, you know, I'm aware of my constituency of the issues NGOs have in retaining staff. And so, yes, we are aware of those staffing turnovers.
To the Member's question about organizations and whether or not those same organizations are delivering services, I'm not sure what awareness the department has but I think they must they probably have a pretty good sense as well. They're the ones who are signing the contribution agreements. And I know from my own experience that there are only so many NGOs, especially outside of Yellowknife. There's actually very few NGOs. And so we do rely on those same NGOs year after year to continue to deliver services. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, then, in dealing with these nonprofits who have been providing the same basic social services in our communities year after year, often for decades, to what extent does the GNWT negotiate these contracts and the terms of reference for the funding contributions collaboratively with those nonprofits? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Many of those contracts are based on federal funding and so we have very limited abilities in those situations. When it's GNWT funding, there's a greater ability to collaborate. But I'll just take a guess that we could probably do more collaboration. I think we can always do more collaboration, and that's going to lead to more to better results and more satisfied organizations and people. So it is you know, I've been preaching about this for quite some time now, so I look forward to enhancing our collaboration with the NGOs. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Premier. Final supplementary. Yellowknife North.
So this is all great news. So my final question is, will the government commit to developing a policy on how such contracts will be developed collaboratively with stable multiyear funding attached for NGOs? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And once again, I think this is great timing for these questions because as we embark on implementation of the homelessness strategy, those are the types of actions that we will be undertaking how can we ensure that NGOs have stable funding? You know, I don't think that the Member needs to convince me of anything. I agreed with much of what she said in her statement. NGOs can provide they do provide core services often at a much lower price than the GNWT can, and so we need to strengthen that partnership as we go forward and try to live within our means as a government. Thank you.
Thank you, Premier. Oral questions. Member from the Sahtu.
