Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Homelessness is not something new, but when I was growing up, I did not see it in my community. What I see now are elders to youth homeless. One thing that I do remember is: there were people who lived out on the land who did come to town. There were people who had a home in town and had a home on the land. Then there were people who lived just on the outskirts of town in my community, in tents. To me, that was their home.
The Northwest Territories Housing Corporation has committed to development of an NWT-wide homelessness strategy. Through this strategy, the NWT Housing Corporation has committed to working with the NWT, federal, and Indigenous partners to increase policy and program alignment and to support the work of community members who provide our much-needed, front-line programming.
Mr. Speaker, we know mental health and addictions are common factors that lead to and keep people homeless. In the NWT, we have two shelter programs that we could consider a public health response to addressing homelessness and addictions, the Yellowknife day shelter and sobering centre and the Inuvik Warming Centre.
Mr. Speaker, the delivery of homelessness programming is hard work that requires attention and support from our social envelope GNWT departments. I would like to raise the attention of the Inuvik Warming Centre in my community, which is struggling to provide this valuable programming. They need support. They need assistance to develop a program plan with trained staff, board training, programming management. Mr. Speaker, they need support to secure a permanent location to offer this programming. Without this program in our community, we know people are in danger of dying. People experiencing homelessness have died in my community. This was the reason the shelter was developed. I would also like to thank all of those in my community who have been volunteering and putting their time in and their heart into the Inuvik Warming Centre over the past year, since its creation. I will have questions for the Minister responsible for Homelessness. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.