Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in follow up to my Member's statement, I have two questions for the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister: how is the Housing Corporation planning to increase housing stock in the Mackenzie Delta communities over the rest of the 18th Assembly? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As all Members know, we do have a capital plan that we do follow. One new initiative that we are doing is the community housing plans, as I have mentioned numerous times during this session, that are going to help identify where our needs are.
Last week I talked about some of our core need progress that has been going on. Our work with the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation is helping address those needs, as well. We have been meeting with the Gwich'in Tribal Council to see how we can work together to address these issues, and we will continue to have those in place as we move forward, but the community housing plans are going to help us address some of those and how we, as a government and as a corporation, spend our capital dollars. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
My next question asks maybe a little too much detail, but I will ask it anyway. I am a Member of the Standing Committee on Social Development, and that committee has often spoken with the Minister of the territory's long waiting list for housing. I want to ask the Minister: how many people have been on the waiting list for more than two years?
The Member is right; it is pretty detailed. I will have to get back to him on that question on how many people have been on the waiting list over the last two years. It could make a lot of work for some of our employees, but we will get that information for him.
We do know that it is a long waiting list right across the Northwest Territories. We are trying to make an indent into that and working our partners, such as ECE, working with Infrastructure, going through our capital plannings, but most importantly we are still continuing to work with our federal counterparts to nail down a bilateral agreement and looking at funding.
As the Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh mentioned earlier, there were some northern housing funds that I believe we got shortchanged on, and we want to address that so that our residents of the Northwest Territories, and us as a government, and our Indigenous governments get the funding that they do deserve to address our housing needs right across the NWT and in our communities.
I know we will see a number of changes over the next year, as I know there are a number of units that have not been completed yet but that are being built at the moment, but I would like to ask the Minister, Mr. Speaker, we need to represent these residents stuck in the housing limbo with some viable options. How will the Housing Corporation take action to rescue these residents from the waiting list?
I agree. As Members of the Legislative Assembly, we all have these issues of people who are on the waiting list. We also, like I mentioned, have a good working relationship with the Department of ECE. We have a lot of programs in place, such as major retrofits. We have had good partnerships with the Salt River First Nations, the IRC, the Fort Good Hope band, and we want to make sure that we address that waiting list. Our Northern Pathways to Housing is another good initiative in transitioning some of our homeless people into more public housing units. We have got a long list of work that we are doing to address core needs, but there is that waiting list that we do need to address, as well as, and we want to make sure that we are trying the best that we can.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
