Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair...(English not provided).
Mr. Chair, I'd just like to highlight what I've said in my language with respect to the district operation. You know, we have district operations in Yellowknife and regional operations in the regions. At the same time we have small communities that go directly to I guess the Yellowknife district office, such as the community of Wekweeti. Wekweeti has been brought up on several occasions here and I'm glad that the Minister has identified the need for the department to come out to the community, but at the same time, we were in the community with Mr. Anderson when he was there, acting president at that time. We took a whole bunch of pictures at that time too, but until this day we're still dealing with those issues that are still outstanding.
Mr. Chair, I think we, as the Tlicho Government, have been in operation for a year and a half and I've raised this issue over some time now as well. We like to see more empowerment in the community. When we talk about district office, maybe we wouldn't be going through this if we had Behchoko as a regional office. I understand Premier, as Premier of this Cabinet is and I guess will be working with his executive team because I've raised this issue already, but at the same time we have small communities that are left out in the cold with nowhere to turn to. This lady that Ms. Lee is referring to has been an issue for a while. It's not resolved yet and it's February, it's a cold month and everything is frozen up. That's not the only issue; there's other issues besides that in the community of Wekweeti where we have lots of single dwellings. I think there are four or five of them empty, due to the fact that there's a larger family now and they're moving out. Even though they move out, they don't know where to turn.
So those are issues that we need to deal with at the community level, but where do they turn? They call Yellowknife. They call me constantly. I've been after the department on that particular issue, but I for one would like to see the department going to the community, similar to what they're doing in Behchoko on February 22nd, explaining what we have to offer, the program itself and single family dwelling versus a family dwelling. There's a big distinct difference in the building itself.
So, Mr. Chair, I'd just like to close off with this, again, implementation stages we're at. When are we going to see changes in our region with respect to having our district staff in Behchoko that can deal with the three outlying communities plus the Behchoko community because we have a large file? We talk about arrears in the past, we talk about mortgages, we talk about housing itself. There's a lot of issues there and we can certainly deal with it at the community level if we had staffing in place, but, according to what I have in front of me, there's no staffing transferable to my region. So I would like to ask the Minister when is that going to occur, what are the plans in place to deal with that on the housing perspective? It's a real essential need. Although we have a local housing authority, they are limited, and the decision is being made from here as well in headquarters here. I'd like to see down the road, not-too-far-off distance, where a decision will be made at the local level within the Tlicho district office in Behchoko. That's what I'd like to pass on to the Minister about when. He also mentioned the staff of the district office going to Wekweeti. When is that going to occur?
So those are just some key issues that I wanted to address here, Mr. Chair. Mahsi.