Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Housing NWT. First, can the Minister confirm what is the current number of people on the NWT public housing waiting list? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. Minister of Housing NWT.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The current number of people on the housing waitlist is 897 applications across the North. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So next, can the Minister confirm whether it is expected that all of those 897 families can be housed through federal funding to Indigenous governments? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Unfortunately, I don't have that information. Based on what I know to date, Indigenous governments are working on market home plans, other type of market rentals for professionals in the community. The 897 on the waiting list are looking for affordable public housing units so, unfortunately, they may not meet the criteria for market home plans. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you. And thanks to the Minister for that. Can the Minister confirm that a major barrier to increasing our public housing stock, at least up to this point, has been resistance to the idea of increasing the transfer of resources for O and M from the GNWT to Housing NWT? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Government of the Northwest Territories, through our finance department, provides us about $80 million a year for Housing NWT operations. We do get funding from CMHC and from CIRNAC to operate and maintain the homes across the North. That's an additional $20 million. So that's the sum of our public housing operating funds throughout the North. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister for Housing NWT. Final supplementary. Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And finally, does the Minister believe that it is both a federal responsibility and the GNWT's responsibility to fund public housing through capital and O and M resources, or is it only a federal responsibility? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's a shared responsibility. It's important that this government and the federal government realize that we need to invest in public housing in the North. I pressed this with Cabinet and my FMB colleagues. This is important. It's a priority of this government, of the 20th Assembly. The work we do and the message we brought to the Council of Leaders in Ottawa was a shared responsibility, working with Indigenous governments in the Northwest Territories, making sure that the message set across from both the federal government and Indigenous governments is these are public housing units in our communities that our families and people in the communities live in and need on a day-to-day basis. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Housing NWT. Oral questions. Member from Inuvik Boot Lake.
