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 in my statement, I have an elder in the community of Aklavik who is being forced out of her home and told that she has to move into the elders' home. I would like to ask the Minister: does the Housing Corporation support elders in aging in place, or is it aging in place that they decide? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In regard to the constituent's concern, I won't get into the specifics. The Member and I have had conversations on that.
One of the mandates of the 18th Legislative Assembly is promoting community wellness and safety to support elders in their own communities for as long as possible. I had questions from one of the Members earlier this week, and we talked about the seniors' aging-in-place retrofits, and we support that. We also want to make sure that, when we look at the work that we are doing in the communities with our seniors and our elders, it is done on a case-by-case study. I did encourage the Member that we will be working with his constituent and himself to address the situation.
Like I said, we do have a mandate. We have done a comprehensive seniors planning study that we're going to focus on. We do have a seniors aging in place retrofits. We are working with the Department of Health and Social Services. Over the past few years, we have constructed five seniors' complexes which I must mention; two of them are in the Member's riding. We continue to support seniors aging in place, or seniors aging in a place where they have the supports and the services that they need.
We will continue to keep the Member updated, and we will continue to dialogue with the Member and work on the case before us and come up with a solution. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As I mentioned in my statement, I am happy to have these elders' facilities in my riding, and we do have elders who are looking forward to moving into these facilities, but we also have elders that enjoy being independent. In one of my other communities, I have an elder who is in her 90's who lives by herself with a wood stove, and hauls her own wood into her home, and she enjoys that. Will the department work with my elder in Aklavik and not force her against her will to move to the elders' home? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
In short, yes, we will. We will work with the Member as well as leaders. We just had a housing summit up in Inuvik, and we had a lot of really good discussions on all the housing issues throughout the Northwest Territories. As you know, we are developing these community housing plans, and the leaders and the stakeholders and community members can tell us what their priorities are. We'll work with them to address them, and we do know that our elders are very important. They're the holders of our cultures, our traditions, our languages, and we want to make sure that we support them so that they can support us and support our youth and the ongoing traditions and cultures of our people.
Thank you. Oral questions. Member for Deh Cho.
