Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In follow-up to my Member's statement, I have a few questions for the Minister responsible for Housing. As I mentioned, there is a housing shortage in the Mackenzie Delta, much like a lot of the communities in the Northwest Territories. I would like to ask the Minister: are there plans to increase the housing stock? We are doing a great job replacing units, but we still have a housing shortage. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To our agreement with the federal government, our obligation is to provide public housing to just over 1,300 units. Currently, we go above and beyond that and provide about 2,400 units in public housing, plus market rent and other projects that we do within the Housing Corporation.
Most recently, when we were at the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association conference in Victoria, we did give that information to the membership there and talked about how we are making those strides to address housing in the North. We also know that there is a national Indigenous Housing Caucus that, as the Housing Corporation, we are going to be looking at providing possibly a couple of memberships for people that really need it. As the speaker knows and Members know, I did make a statement in the House yesterday on the community housing plans and how we address those.
There are numerous programs that we do throughout the Housing Corporation, and I think that it is through the leadership of the MLA, and the leadership of the chief and mayor, that we can sit down and start working on how we can address this and inform everyone on the programs that we do, which we did do during the first housing summit that we had up in Inuvik earlier this year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I would like to ask the Minister: will the department hold workshops in the Mackenzie Delta on how to take advantage of all the federal funding that is available for new homes in the communities?
One of the objectives that we had when we did the housing summit was that we can bring all of our Indigenous leadership together throughout the Northwest Territories, so that we can actually go and lobby the federal government, as well as our national Indigenous organizations, to see how we can get some of that funding here in the Northwest Territories.
As I have mentioned in this House before, the Inuvialuit has a good partnership with ITK, and they are doing some really good work up in the ISR region. We want to make sure that we can ensure that our other Indigenous organizations throughout the Northwest Territories have that same opportunity, and we will continue to work with our leadership to try to access that kind of funding.
Is there a limit to what a community can access with the National Housing Co-investment Fund?
One of the bright sides of the co-investment fund was that we were able to negotiate a $60 million carve-out that the NWT can use, and we are working with Indigenous organizations, as well as NGOs and our stakeholders that address housing needs in the Northwest Territories. Above and beyond that, we can still work with our partners to put in applications federally to that coinvestment fund.
As we work on that, I think that we are going to see some good head way moving forward, but there is not a limit, and I encourage all organizations, Indigenous governments, to come and meet with our headquarters or even send an email to myself or through your MLA to see how we can put in an application as well as working with the CMHC to possibly seek some of their seed funding to get a proposal proposed.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
