This is page numbers 6621 – 6658 of the Hansard for the 17th Assembly, 5th Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was services.

Topics

Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery
Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Yakeleya.

Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery
Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery

Norman Yakeleya

Norman Yakeleya Sahtu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize and thank all the visitors to the Assembly here. I want to name, of course, Hilda. She’s not here, but I also want to thank her. Hilda is family. She’s my first cousin. One of the things that I want to say is when I walk down the hallway into the office, Hilda always says, “No, no, this is how you do it. You’ve got to do this, this and that.” So she keeps me on the straight and narrow. I also wanted to congratulate her on her retirement.

Also, to Mr. Erasmus in the gallery, too, and all the other people from the Yukon for visiting us over in the Northwest Territories. Hopefully, one day we’ll get a chance to visit them over there.

Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery
Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery
Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery

October 1st, 2015

Jane Groenewegen

Jane Groenewegen Hay River South

Thank you. I

’d also just

like to make a comment on Hilda Camirand and what a cheerful good morning we get as we go down the Ministers’ corridor to our meetings in the morning and just for being the encouraging and supportive person that she is. When I look around the staff and when I look around the Members, there are not a lot of people who predate Minister Miltenberger’s and my arrival here. Mr. Schauerte is one of them. Hilda is one of them. There are not very many, and Hilda’s been there for a long time. She’s an institution and much appreciated by everyone.

Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery
Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. I’d like to welcome everybody here in the public gallery. Thank you for taking an interest in our proceedings.

Item 6, acknowledgements. Item 7, oral questions. Mr. Yakeleya.

Norman Yakeleya

Norman Yakeleya Sahtu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like

to ask the question to the Minister of the Housing Corporation. Why are there so many empty houses in Fort Good Hope and how many empty houses are there in Fort Good Hope?

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Minister of the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, Mr. McLeod.

Robert C. McLeod

Robert C. McLeod Inuvik Twin Lakes

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My understanding is we have an eight- plex in Fort Good Hope. I believe this is what he’s referring to. That is empty. I think we’re in the process of selling that particular unit. I think we have another eight units that we might be in talks with the local government about taking on these units.

Norman Yakeleya

Norman Yakeleya Sahtu

The Minister is correct on the eight-plex that is sitting empty and in the process of sell

ing it in the community. I’m not too sure where it

will be going to or which organization or person. It’s been there for a while.

Why is it taking so long to dispose of this empty unit while there are a lot of people on the waiting list? Why are the empty units still sitting there while there are a lot of people on the waiting list to get into these units? What can we do to expedite this situation so that we can put people into houses rather than have them in other houses where overcrowding is a major health issue?

Robert C. McLeod

Robert C. McLeod Inuvik Twin Lakes

Every community has an allotment of public housing, and as we take the units out of stock, we have a disposal plan. We try to sell off the unit if we can. Those that we dispose of, with the new WSCC regulations we have to do a hazardous material assessment and abatement before we’re able to dispose of those units. So it’s added on a tremendous cost to our ability to dispose of many of these units. The Member and I were having a conversation where, back in the day, they’d just come in with a backhoe, take the unit down and haul it off to the garbage dump. We don’t have that ability anymore. So we’re trying to come up with the funding to… It’s almost double or even triple the cost in some cases, so we’re challenged that way and our aggressive disposal plan is not as aggressive as it used to be. So we’re taking steps to try and address that. Thank you.

Norman Yakeleya

Norman Yakeleya Sahtu

Certainly, the Minister and I were speaking this morning on why it’s taking so long to dispose of these empty units, knowing that Fort Good Hope has a long list of potential tenants who want to go into these units and there’s overcrowding. It’s causing health issues; it’s causing social issues and people want to get into these units.

Is the Minister actively looking at an expedient process where these empty units can either be retrofitted by the local community organizations or be torn down? Like the Minister said, in the old days it was good because you could go in there, knock the houses down and build a new one. Now we seem to have more bureaucratic red tape costing us more, so it’s more difficult to replace these units or sell them off to the local government. People want these empty units filled either by building new ones or tearing them down.

Is the Minister looking at an expedient process for this to happen in Fort Good Hope?

Robert C. McLeod

Robert C. McLeod Inuvik Twin Lakes

This eight-

plex that’s in

Fort Good Hope, I’ll get the update on that and share it with the Member. I’m not sure where we’re at with that.

As far as the other units go, I’d have to get an update on those. If there are some there that we deem are write-offs, we will sell them if people want to take them on and try to do some renovations themselves. We’ve had that done in the past. I’ll get an update on all of the units that are in Fort Good Hope and the status and where we’re at with those. Again, we’re challenged by the fact that we have to do an assessment and remediate a lot of these units before we dispose of them. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Norman Yakeleya

Norman Yakeleya Sahtu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is a TV program called Clean House where they come in and they take all the junk out of the house and people sometimes have a hard time letting go of some of their junk in the hou

se. It’s almost like

this Housing Corporation is letting go of some of their junk in the House here. So, I know this can be done because in my hometown of Tulita the Housing actually did a very good job of turning over these empty units to the community corporation real estate. They actually bought these units, fixed them up and rented them out.

Can this happen in Fort Good Hope where the Housing Corporation can go and say these units can be turned over to the community? The community is waiting to purchase these, build them and get these young couples into these houses. That’s what they’re waiting for. So, can the Minister clean house on this issue?

Robert C. McLeod

Robert C. McLeod Inuvik Twin Lakes

Thank you. We’d love

to clean house, but again, we’re faced with some of the challenges of the proper assessment and remediation. We would be more than pleased to sell these units to a community group as we did in Tulita and they took on responsibility of those units. I think they were in the process of renovating them and they would rent them out and they would collect the revenues. We’re more than willing to partner with communities where we have a lot of these vacant units, and if there’s an opportunity for them to take those off our hands and fix them themselves, then we have other opportunities to possibly look at putting new replacement public housing in the communities. We’re faced with many challenges and we’ve continued to try and address those. We understand that it is an issue across the NWT, so we’re looking at taking on that challenge head on. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Bob Bromley

Bob Bromley Weledeh

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Public Works and Services. I’d like to follow up on his statement yesterday.

Yesterday the Minister gave a statement outlining some of the things we have done to reduce energy consumption, and I was pleased to hear the progress that’s been made. However, until a long overdue energy efficiency act is in place, our performance as a territory will be hit and miss.

We know that an act is not about to happen during the life of this Assembly, but the Minister at least promised a discussion paper towards such an act, but where is the promised document for our review? Mahsi.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister of Public Works, Mr. Beaulieu.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have the information here in the House with me on how far along the department is in producing a discussion paper for the Assembly. I will talk to Public Works today to find out if I can get an update for the Members in the House and provide that early next week. Thank you.

Bob Bromley

Bob Bromley Weledeh

I’m not quite sure what to say

here. The Minister seems to be unaware of this, and yet this is fundamental to reducing our energy costs and so on.

Will the promised discussion paper be ready… I can’t even ask the rest of my question, so I’ll have to stop here, Mr. Speaker. The Minister doesn’t have any information. I’ll have to say I’m very disappointed. We need our government to be on top of these important issues. Mahsi.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you. That was more of a comment. Mr. Moses.

Alfred Moses

Alfred Moses Inuvik Boot Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just following up to my Member’s statement earlier, and there are some really good Ministers’ statements here as well. One was from Justice in terms of using an elder in some of our work that we’re going to be doing in the traditional healing and enlisting Aboriginal elders in the aspects of their culture and traditions, focusing on traditional healing in the corrections facility. Also, when I mentioned that meeting that we had in Inuvik, we had discussions of the regional wellness councils, and elders who were there spoke up and said that they would really love to be on those regional councils, as well, but they had a lot of concerns, and I guess, just the whole aspect of having that regional meeting.

I’d like to ask the Minister responsible for Seniors, what is his department doing to create more regional

meetings

like

this

throughout

the

Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.

Glen Abernethy

Glen Abernethy Great Slave

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a fairly positive working relationship with the NWT Seniors’ Society and we have provided funding for some meetings and some of the functions that they’re undertaking.

With respect to facilitating the exact type of meeting that the Member is talking about, I will talk to the department to find out where we are with those kinds of supports and I will get back to the Member. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Alfred Moses

Alfred Moses Inuvik Boot Lake

In terms of an action plan, I know there is a Seniors’ Handbook that’s out in the communities. Can I ask the Minister, is there an action plan for seniors? As he heard here today, there are housing issues and even issues in terms of long-term care facilities and beds. Is there an action plan for our senior population over the next five, the next 10 years? One of my colleagues mentioned the increased population, you know, five years from now, 11 years from now, even further down the road. Is there an action plan to address some of these issues moving forward? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.