Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can’t talk to the details about the NWT Housing Corp’s programs, but I would encourage the Member to follow up with the appropriate Minister.

What I can say is that I listened intently to the Member’s opening comments and Member’s statement. The issues he is bringing up are consistent with issues that he brought up during the winter session about conflicts in departments and having barriers to providing quality services to our residents. At that time I did get a copy of the Member’s statement with a list of samples and examples of areas where he felt, and others have felt, that there are serious barriers to service delivery.

As the Minister responsible for the social envelope, I did direct the deputy responsible to pull together the types of issues that the Member and other Members have shared about these types of conflicts. We have also directed them to dig into the departments and seek out examples that are similar. We have pulled together over 50 from the departments and added the samples that have been provided by Members.

As we have been going through this, it’s clear that some of these barriers and some of the challenges that the Member is talking about, some of them are due to communication and perception and not clearly understanding some of the rules. Clearly, we as a government need to do far better at explaining and helping our public understand some of the programs and services. But at the same time, there are some that clearly, without a doubt, as a result of conflicting priorities and policies within the departments.

We have directed departments to work together through the Social Envelope Committee to identify which ones are more communication-based, which ones are policy-based and come back with recommendations on how to start breaking down

these barriers and remove them so that our residents are not forced to go into poverty or to have the housing challenges that have been identified over time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.