Thank you, Member for Nunakput. Members' statements. Member for Thebacha.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, for my statement today I am going to talk about the disaster assistance policy under the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs.
Mr. Speaker, last year, the Government of the Northwest Territories completed a comprehensive review of MACA's disaster assistance policy following the flood disasters of 2021. I agreed with this review for a variety of reasons but primarily because the policy was outdated and needed modernizing to account for climate change and the changing nature of natural disasters. I was initially hopeful that this review might address some of the service gaps that the old disaster policy did not cover, but I was very disappointed with the updated policy that came out last May.
First of all, Mr. Speaker, I had suggested to the Minister of MACA several times that the updated policy must be expanded and eligible to more people when a natural disaster occurs. I told him that the new policy must account for unique and extraordinary events that may occur within the NWT, especially with the onset of climate change which brings an increased likelihood of extreme weather events. However, Mr. Speaker, I was disappointed to learn that the updates to this policy did not go far enough in helping victims of natural disasters.
The first part of the new policy I didn't like was the way the term "disaster" was defined, which is an emergency caused by a natural phenomena of unusual proportion affecting a large number of people which threatens loss of life, injury, property damage, or economic disruption.
The second aspect I didn't like was that under the list of emergencies that will be eligible for assistance, there is no mention of tornados which is odd because, while very rare, there has been least one well documented tornado in the NWT in the last few years.
The third part of this policy that I did not agree with is the section that lists excluded situations where assistance is not eligible which includes an event affecting a single sector or property. Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
Unanimous consent granted
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I don’t want to start any conspiracy theories here, but it appears awfully coincidental that among the new changes to the disaster assistance policy, there are specific allocations that would make what happened to my constituent whose house was destroyed by a tornado ineligible for any coverage under this policy. It just does not make any sense to me that the Government of the Northwest Territories would not extend this policy to events that only affected one property. Why is that victims are only eligible for coverage under this policy if there was damage or widespread that a significant number of people or properties were affected? These are questions that need to be answered publicly. I will have questions for the question of MACA at the appropriate time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Thebacha. Members' statements. Member for Frame Lake.
