Thank you, Mr. Clerk. And I thank the Member for the question. Thank you, Mr. Clerk, and thank you to the Member for the question. I think this is a sneak preview for our priorities, honestly, because the common themes here are very clear, and housing is one of them. We have spoken at length about it. I told you about my -- I told the House about my experience working with this file with the Yellowknives Dene. And, you know, that's -- again, this is a proven success model. We're seeing this take place across the Northwest Territories. And I think to the question directly about operations and maintenance funding, I think now is the time to actually look at the housing -- NWT Housing and its LHOs and whether or not we should be transferring LHOs to Indigenous governments and potentially municipalities as well. Have we outgrown the need for a centralized housing corporation, or should we be looking at a more regionalized model? I think that's what we're hearing. And I think that's something we should definitely consider. And especially where we have a treaty relationship with a self-governing nation, or nations that are soon to be self-governing, once we complete negotiations around those treaties and around land rights, so I think we should be really considering that. And if they don't have the capacity but they want the funding and they want the capacity, then let's find a pathway using the Council of Leaders, using those other intergovernmental forums. But I don't think we need to start there. We already heard that. I've heard that. We've all heard that in this House. We know what the issue is. We know what the ask is. So let's figure out how to get that money to them. Let's figure out how to get that responsibility to them, whether it's a bilateral deal, whether it's a wholesale change of policy. So I'll say this to the House, let's put that in the mandate letter for the housing Minister to actually explore and look at how we can move more money out of the GNWT and into the hands of First Nations and self-governing sovereign territories. Thank you.
Kieron Testart on Questions by Members
On December 7th, 2023. See this statement in context.
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