Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture, and Employment.
Education, Culture, and Employment income assistance policies not only play a key role in caring for Northerners, but they also play a key role in housing Northerners.
So I'm wondering if the Minister of Education, Culture, and Employment will remove the requirement that NWT income assistance applicants must add their names to the NWT Housing Corporation housing wait list, public housing wait list. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake.
Minister responsible for Education, Culture, and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Maybe. That you know, well, when I came into this role as an MLA previously, I received a lot of income assistance questions or concerns from my constituents. So I know there's areas that can be improved, and that's why we've initiated review of the Income Assistance Program.
And through that review, this is one of those areas that we're looking at. I have to say that the Member is correct that housing is it's a government wide issue, and for our part at ECE, we do provide housing in a sense where we will provide rental support to individuals who can't afford it essentially, or who are down on their luck, who are having a rough time.
And these individuals have to use all of their own financial means first. And one of those or one of those things available to them is the social subsidized housing through the housing corporation. And the reason that that is currently a requirement is cost essentially. Over the past three years, shelter benefits have been provided to around 2,000 income assistance applicants in the Territory to the tune of about $7 million. Of that, 40 percent of those individuals were in market rental units; however, that accounts for about 90 percent of the cost. The 60 percent who are in who have been public housing accounts for about 11 percent of the cost.
So it would be a great cost to ECE to provide that benefit; however, someone's paying that cost of the public housing. And so the money's being spent by the government.
And so is there a way that we can make things more efficient, reduce the burden on people, reduce the burden on administration? And if one of those ways is by rejigging how we provide housing and who provides housing, then we want to do that.
So I don't have a firm "yes" now, but I want to have a policy that makes sense by the time this Assembly is over. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I think I'd like to report something to the Red Tape Working Group. Right now and I understand what the Minister is saying, and I appreciate they're doing a review on the income assistance policies. It's very much needed. But hanging on to a piece of a policy throughout a review that really isn't serving the people of the Northwest Territories just doesn't make sense to me. We have over 900 people on our wait list right now, and not all of those 900 people need public housing.
For somebody to have to walk down the block and in Yellowknife, it's about a sixblock trek for somebody to make another trip down the street to go fill out another form before they can then come back and say, Okay. I did that part of it, and since they have no housing for me because our housing stock has not changed in decades, can I now please get the income assistance accommodation rent through ECE.
And so the wait list absolutely does not serve us at all. So while I appreciate that ECE is doing a review of the income assistance policies, I'm wondering if the Minister will commit to removing this portion of the policy that absolutely does not serve Northerners or the pocketbooks of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And, no, I can't because of that money issue that I mentioned whereby we spend millions and millions of dollars on market housing compared to hundreds of thousands of dollars on the public housing. And right now, that's just the fact of it. That's just the budgets.
And this Assembly is the one that appropriates money, and we would have to come back for a large appropriation if this was the case. And so I can't commit to spending millions of dollars that, frankly, we don't have at this moment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I guess I just disagree with the Minister on this one because we don't have enough public housing stock in order to put people in. So whether or not we're pretending we don't want to spend it because we want to put people into public housing, we don't have the public housing units. And so whether or not we want to spend it, we're still spending that money. We're just creating red tape in the process of spending it.
My next question for the Minister, though, is private sector and nonprofits and Indigenous housing providers want to work with the government to create secure housing options for northerners through longer term lease and program agreements. Access to ECE's accommodation allowance is only available on a monthtomonth basis, creating uncertain tenure for landlords and residents.
So will the Minister work with these stakeholders to increase housing allowance flexibility and create certainty through lease agreements with northern landlords? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for ECE.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
ECE doesn't have lease agreements with landlords month to month. ECE provides benefits to individuals, and those individuals can then pay their rent with that funding.
What the Member is talking about is more what the housing corporation does. It provides housing. That being said, there are clients who are pay rolled, meaning they don't have to report their income month to month. So they are getting income for three months straight being cut off, if that's the case. Six months, maybe a year.
And so there are situations like that. And since the pandemic, you know, I've given direction to be much more liberal with pay rolling so that we have more individuals like that.
But, again, I recognize the issue here, and this is one of the reasons we are doing this review, which will be completed and implemented by the end of this Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Final supplementary, Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, a lot of the work that we're discussing as wanting to put forward from the standing committee on social development has to do with being able to change policies so that we can see real change in housing in the Northwest Territories.
Some of those policies are in the housing corporation, but some of them are in the Department of Education, Culture, and Employment. Some of them are in Finance.
And so I'm wondering based on the timeline that the Minister just gave us as the end of the assembly, if the Minister is willing to work with standing committee and with regular Members to change some of those policies that really don't make sense before the end of the review. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm always happy to work with the standing committees. But to make changes in the midst of review, it kind of defeats the purpose. What are you reviewing? If the program isn't the program that you're reviewing, then what do you do with those results.
So I'm happy to work with the standing committee, but we have a process in place. And I also want to say that the Member mentions a number of different departments, and one of the things that we're also working on is an integrated service delivery model that really looks at the needs of the individuals and not the needs of government. And housing department is or housing corporation is working with Education, Culture, and Employment, is working with Justice, is working with Health to begin developing programs and policies that make sense.
And I think that is really the key to a lot of these issues, because we see these individual problems that would be solved if we actually developed the policies in the first place with the clients in mind.
So that's the direction we're moving in. And I just want to make sure that everyone's aware of that because that is one of the I believe going to be one of the key initiatives of not just this government but the future of government in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions, Member for Yellowknife North.
