Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to speak about the priorities that have been informed by my eight years as an MLA; four as a Regular Member, four as a Minister, as well as, and most importantly, what I've heard from my constituents, the constituents of Hay River North. And so I think it's important to give some context about what Hay River has been through in the past five years.
In 2019, we saw the closure of the Hay River high rise. 130 people woke up with homes and went to bed homeless. Overnight, a building with 124 units was shut down. That has had such a major impact on the community. There were always vacancies in that building and so if a business wanted to bring someone into town, that person could find a place to live. So with that closure, we saw a massive impact on an already short housing situation.
That was followed shortly by COVID. For two years, Hay River experienced COVID, just like the rest of the territory, but I would say it was more divisive in Hay River than anywhere else. And the community is still healing from those wounds. That was followed the next year by what was, at the time, the biggest natural disaster in the history of the NWT, the flood. 500 homes in Hay River, KFN, damaged or destroyed. Mr. Speaker, there are elders who were in their late 80s when that happened. They're now in their early 90s, and they've been living a hotel room for the past year and a half. One resident had his 90th birthday at the evacuation centre here in Yellowknife actually and that's because this year, again, we were evacuated. The entire community evacuated. Not once, but twice. Three times in less than a year and a half, Mr. Speaker.
While this was all going on, we also saw an influx -- sorry, Mr. Chair. While this was all going on, we also saw an influx of illicit drugs into the community and new types of drugs. And not just drugs but tainted drugs. And we saw a number of deaths in the community. At least half a dozen directly attributed to toxic drugs and an additional maybe four or five additional deaths that probably wouldn't have -- might not have occurred without those drugs. This has become a very serious issue. And with those drugs, there's also organized crime now moving into the community.
During this entire time, we've also experienced health care shortages, health care professional shortages. There have been times when we've had zero physicians in our community. Meanwhile, every other regional centre has two or three or four or, you know, a number of health care physicians in the community at any given time. How is it that the second largest community in the territory which serves, you know, a number of communities in the region does not have physicians, Mr. Chair?
So this is the background that Hay River is dealing with right now. And so it's no surprise that the biggest concerns that I heard going door to door, and just living in the community, was the safety and security of our residents. At the bare minimum, the government needs to provide a safe and secure environment for residents. Residents need to feel as though they can live in their community. With constant disasters, with constant evacuations, with being out of our homes for two months this year, Mr. Chair, residents don't feel safe or secure anymore. And so those are the issues that we need to address. We need to ensure that we are doing our job to protect communities from disasters and emergencies through planning, preparation, mitigation, and proper investments. And, you know, the government finances, while they are stable, we can't keep expanding. And so I don't think there are lots of areas that we can make new investments in but this is one of the areas that we need to make investments in. If we built homes, if we have measures in place that prevent damage from happening, in the long run that saves us money.
We need to deal with our health issues in the community. People are moving because there are no physicians, and they don't feel safe. We have many seniors who don't have feel safe because they don't trust that if they get sick, they will be taken care of.
And we need to deal with the crime and the drugs in the community as well. The RCMP, they love nothing more than busting bad guys but over the years, they've had a number of the tools they traditionally use taken away from them by changes to the Criminal Code, by decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada, and so as a territorial government we need to look at what we can do to support the RCMP as they try to address drugs and organized crime. So there's legislation that we can enact. Things like the scan legislation, civil forfeiture legislation, a trespass act.
We also need to look at our housing policies. I hear many complaints that there are residents in housing units who, you know, have a brand new truck and new skidoos and everything out front, and everyone knows that that's the drug dealer's house. So why are they in a social housing unit paying $80 a month? We need to change our housing policies to ensure that that doesn't happen. And ultimately, drugs is a -- it's not a criminal issue. It's a public health issue. And so we need to look at how we're going to address that. We've had a number of treatment centres in the territory. The territorial treatment centre system doesn't appear to have worked for us. So what else can we do? And I think that if we are investing our limited resources that we need to look at aftercare. People can go away to treatment. They can get treatment but when they come home, what are they coming back to? They might come back to homelessness. They might be couch surfing on their friend's couch who, you know, parties all the time. It doesn't take long to fall back into it if we don't address the aftercare part of it.
We also need to look at housing. It needs to be a priority. And this is true across Canada but especially true here in the territory. And there's lots of talk about social housing, but it's not just social housing. We need market housing as well and especially in communities like Hay River. If we have more market housing, that'll free up some of our social housing. The town and the Government of the Northwest Territories have worked on a housing strategy, and I think it's a good strategy, and it's something that we need to support, and we need to encourage. It's not something that can just sit on a shelf.
And speaking of housing, we also need to simplify and accelerate the process of returning displaced residents to their home. Earlier, I spoke about someone in their 90s who's been living in a hotel for a year and a half, coming up two years. Many people have gone through the process of, you know, repairing or replacing their homes. They've managed to get through that relatively complicated process, but not everyone has. And we need to ensure that we are taking care of everybody. And I could go through a number of different examples of cases that I've been working on, with the former MLA from Hay River have been working on, and, you know, those are our friends, they're our family, they're our community members, and they're heartbreaking stories and we need to do better to address them.
The government's finances, I mentioned that, you know, we're not in a terrible fiscal situation but we need to rein in government growth. We cannot continue to grow at the rate we've been growing. I don't think we need to make massive cuts but I think the government is stretched too thin. We've tried to do too many things, and we're doing them halfway. We need to focus our efforts on doing what things that are important. We need to get back to basics and ensure that we are delivering the services, providing the safety and security and the health care and the housing to residents that they need. We need to focus our efforts, get things done, and not do things halfway.
One of the ways to do that is with ensuring that we continue what we started in the last government with government procurement. When I was a Regular Member in the 18th Assembly, I was quite frustrated seeing all of the contract dollars from the GNWT flow to southern companies. There are many things in the economy that are outside of our control. How we spend our money is in our control. By that last year, when I was a regular Member, 75 percent of contract dollars from the GNWT were going south. This last government, the last two full years that we have data for, 75 percent of contract dollars were given to northern businesses. So we've completely flipped that, and we need to make sure that we continue that.
And of course, Mr. Speaker, reconciliation. That is going to be the cornerstone -- that should be the cornerstone of the upcoming government in my opinion. I believe we made some changes to negotiating mandates to how we approach Indigenous governments, and I believe we can finalize a couple of agreements in the next four years. You know, we can't continue this cycle. And we need to recognize that in 50 years, the territory's going to look much different than it does now. What is the GNWT's goal going to be in 50 years? You know, Indigenous governments are already taking on more responsibility, and they want to take on more responsibility, and so we need to start working with Indigenous governments now in a completely different way to ensure that when we develop legislation, programs, policies that the Indigenous governments are comfortable with it and those are the policies and legislation that they want to at some point take on responsibility for and administer. That means that we might have to do less because it does take time to work together but that is important. That is one of the most important things I think that can come out of this government.
And finally, Mr. Speaker, I'll say that one of my last priorities is to just make government easier for people. I hear of elders who need to fill out multiple forms to get assistance to basically do the same thing to their home, to get repairs to their homes, to get upgrades to their homes. I hear of -- I see the clock is ticking.
So I hear a number of things like this. What we need to do is give direction to government that when they are designing programs, policies, and legislation, that they focus on the end user, whether that's residents, whether that's businesses, we need to focus on designing legislation, policies, and programs for the people and not for government. Thank you, Mr. Chair.