Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Further to my Member's statements on housing, my questions are for the Minister of Housing. We are now more than three months after the Northern Housing Summit in Inuvik. Can the Minister talk about what came out of the summit and what next steps might be? Mahsi.
Masi. Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was very proud to hold this summit up in the community of Inuvik, only because we have looked at some new initiatives and the way we do housing in the Arctic, especially with discussions around climate change. I think that this was the first one of its kind, in terms of where we had a lot of leadership right across the territory. We invited leaders to come to the forefront and discuss the issues.
We have identified four key outcomes in our report on the summit. I can, in due time, make sure that I can give the Members and the committee -- we did have committee there, as well -- and share with them some of the outcomes that came out of that summit. If anything, I think that I have put responsibility not only on the territorial government, but also federally and locally, in making sure that we all have responsibility in addressing housing across the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thanks to the Minister for the reply. We look forward to the information. My next question, then, Mr. Speaker: I certainly appreciate that the Housing Corporation did a lot of work organizing and bringing communities, Indigenous leaders, and other stakeholders together to learn of the opportunities at the forum, such as the co-investment fund. Organizations in my riding want to put forward proposals under the co-investment. How would they pursue this?
As I mentioned in a Member's statement in the House during a previous session, we did negotiate a $60-million carve-out of the co-investment fund. I would like to let all leadership across the Northwest Territories and other partnerships know that we can go above and beyond that and still put in an application to the federal government to access more dollars.
We also have a strong partnership with the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. We have been working with them to work with our local leadership and our Indigenous leadership to access that funding. We have been pushing that during the summit, as well as in our bilateral agreements. Hopefully, we will see more access and more applications to the program to make sure that our communities can access some of this housing funding moving forward.
I will relay that message on to the regional leaders in utilization of their bilateral. My third question is: I know that there has been a lot of work on the community housing plans. Can the Minister provide an update on those plans and what is going on in the Sahtu riding?
As Members know, initially, when we were doing these community housing plans, it was a pilot project and something new to the Northwest Territories. I think that it is something that should be pushed right across Canada, especially in our rural and remote communities, on how we address housing issues.
Initially, we had three that we wanted to pilot. To date, I can tell the Member and all Members in the Legislative Assembly that we have 12 that we are working on. I made a statement earlier today that Whati, Paulatuk, and Liard are communities that we are working on. I think that it is going to be a good news story, and it is going to help us learn how we invest our dollars into community housing plans and encourage all leadership to approach us, work with CMHC, and work with our leadership here at the Legislative Assembly and in our communities to work on seeing what our priorities are in our communities across the territory.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Sahtu.
Thanks, Mr. Speaker, and thanks to the Minister for that information. My last question, Mr. Speaker, is: I understand that the Government of Canada has dedicated funding for Indigenous housing. Can the Minister tell us where we are at with allocations under this fund for the Northwest Territories? Mahsi.
We have had meetings with various federal Ministers across the board on funding for on-reserve, off-reserve. In terms of housing, we have worked with, I have said in the House before, the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation. They were successful working with ITK to get funding to do some work, and then they partnered with us to look at our capital planning and our strategy, and that came right from the federal government. That went to the national Indigenous organization. One of the, I won't say the "priorities," but focuses out of that summit that we did up in Inuvik was to bring all of our Indigenous organizations together to lobby not only the federal government but the Assembly of First Nations and the national Metis organization to see how we can be recognized here in the Northwest Territories, because we are an over-50 percent Aboriginal population, that we should get some of the funding that the federal government gave to the NIOs and see how we can use that funding to address our housing issues across the Northwest Territories. We will continue to lobby not only the federal government but our NIOs, as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
