Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It sounds like there's a lot of red tape around the red tape reduction working group.

So, again, I just want to put back to remind the Minister, which I know she's aware of, that, you know, it is really hard to always -- or it seems that the burden is often put on constituents and residents to come forward to complain, to identify the problems. And during COVID, I think that's just a lot more difficult for people to be doing.

So I will continue to encourage people now that I know which email address to send it to. My last question is around the Deh Cho region and the flooding. What is the Department of ITI going to do to specifically help those businesses in the Deh Cho region that are affected by the flooding to, first, survive, and then rebuild their businesses. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, right now, ITI staff in the region, not only are they, of course, themselves no doubt suffering and experiencing directly the impacts of the floods, but I know that they have been involved in the front lines of helping with the efforts to really just provide immediate necessities and having immediate needs addressed.

So, you know, a course of thank-yous should be made as well to ITI staff there who I know are working very hard on that frontline. With respect to what's going to come next, Mr. Speaker, we've been doing a lot of relief and recovery effort in the last year and half now. That will continue, whether in the context of the pandemic or whether in the context of the floods.

And already I know of at least one example of where ITI staff from another region were able to ensure that programs and services and the needs of businesses were being met in a timely way, because they could step in even when the ITI folks in the region were unable to. That will certainly continue. So there will not be any delays, which is important, of course, applying for programs that may be in a federal nature.

I should mention BDIC which has also been over the last year saying to really take a client service approach. They contacted every single client that had outstanding loans to see if people needed to renegotiate things as a result of COVID.

And, again, I think that philosophy that we've seen will continue in the next year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister. Oral questions, Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you, Member for Kam Lake.

Minister responsible for Education, Culture, and Employment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Maybe. That -- you know, well, when I came into this role as an MLA previously, I received a lot of income assistance questions or concerns from my constituents. So I know there's areas that can be improved, and that's why we've initiated review of the Income Assistance Program.

And through that review, this is one of those areas that we're looking at. I have to say that the Member is correct that housing is -- it's a government wide issue, and for our part at ECE, we do provide housing in a sense where we will provide rental support to individuals who can't afford it essentially, or who are down on their luck, who are having a rough time.

And these individuals have to use all of their own financial means first. And one of those -- or one of those things available to them is the social subsidized housing through the housing corporation. And the reason that that is currently a requirement is cost essentially. Over the past three years, shelter benefits have been provided to around 2,000 income assistance applicants in the Territory to the tune of about $7 million. Of that, 40 percent of those individuals were in market rental units; however, that accounts for about 90 percent of the cost. The 60 percent who are in -- who have been public housing accounts for about 11 percent of the cost.

So it would be a great cost to ECE to provide that benefit; however, someone's paying that cost of the public housing. And so the money's being spent by the government.

And so is there a way that we can make things more efficient, reduce the burden on people, reduce the burden on administration? And if one of those ways is by rejigging how we provide housing and who provides housing, then we want to do that.

So I don't have a firm "yes" now, but I want to have a policy that makes sense by the time this Assembly is over. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I think I'd like to report something to the Red Tape Working Group. Right now -- and I understand what the Minister is saying, and I appreciate they're doing a review on the income assistance policies. It's very much needed. But hanging on to a piece of a policy throughout a review that really isn't serving the people of the Northwest Territories just doesn't make sense to me. We have over 900 people on our wait list right now, and not all of those 900 people need public housing.

For somebody to have to walk down the block -- and in Yellowknife, it's about a six-block trek for somebody to make another trip down the street to go fill out another form before they can then come back and say, Okay. I did that part of it, and since they have no housing for me -- because our housing stock has not changed in decades, can I now please get the income assistance accommodation rent through ECE.

And so the wait list absolutely does not serve us at all. So while I appreciate that ECE is doing a review of the income assistance policies, I'm wondering if the Minister will commit to removing this portion of the policy that absolutely does not serve Northerners or the pocketbooks of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And, no, I can't because of that money issue that I mentioned whereby we spend millions and millions of dollars on market housing compared to hundreds of thousands of dollars on the public housing. And right now, that's just the fact of it. That's just the budgets.

And this Assembly is the one that appropriates money, and we would have to come back for a large appropriation if this was the case. And so I can't commit to spending millions of dollars that, frankly, we don't have at this moment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I guess I just disagree with the Minister on this one because we don't have enough public housing stock in order to put people in. So whether or not we're pretending we don't want to spend it because we want to put people into public housing, we don't have the public housing units. And so whether or not we want to spend it, we're still spending that money. We're just creating red tape in the process of spending it.

My next question for the Minister, though, is private sector and nonprofits and Indigenous housing providers want to work with the government to create secure housing options for northerners through longer term lease and program agreements. Access to ECE's accommodation allowance is only available on a month-to-month basis, creating uncertain tenure for landlords and residents.

So will the Minister work with these stakeholders to increase housing allowance flexibility and create certainty through lease agreements with northern landlords? Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for ECE.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

ECE doesn't have lease agreements with landlords month to month. ECE provides benefits to individuals, and those individuals can then pay their rent with that funding.

What the Member is talking about is more what the housing corporation does. It provides housing. That being said, there are clients who are pay rolled, meaning they don't have to report their income month to month. So they are getting income for three months straight being cut off, if that's the case. Six months, maybe a year.

And so there are situations like that. And since the pandemic, you know, I've given direction to be much more liberal with pay rolling so that we have more individuals like that.

But, again, I recognize the issue here, and this is one of the reasons we are doing this review, which will be completed and implemented by the end of this Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Final supplementary, Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, a lot of the work that we're discussing as wanting to put forward from the standing committee on social development has to do with being able to change policies so that we can see real change in housing in the Northwest Territories.

Some of those policies are in the housing corporation, but some of them are in the Department of Education, Culture, and Employment. Some of them are in Finance.

And so I'm wondering based on the timeline that the Minister just gave us as the end of the assembly, if the Minister is willing to work with standing committee and with regular Members to change some of those policies that really don't make sense before the end of the review. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm always happy to work with the standing committees. But to make changes in the midst of review, it kind of defeats the purpose. What are you reviewing? If the program isn't the program that you're reviewing, then what do you do with those results.

So I'm happy to work with the standing committee, but we have a process in place. And I also want to say that the Member mentions a number of different departments, and one of the things that we're also working on is an integrated service delivery model that really looks at the needs of the individuals and not the needs of government. And housing department is -- or housing corporation is working with Education, Culture, and Employment, is working with Justice, is working with Health to begin developing programs and policies that make sense.

And I think that is really the key to a lot of these issues, because we see these individual problems that would be solved if we actually developed the policies in the first place with the clients in mind.

So that's the direction we're moving in. And I just want to make sure that everyone's aware of that because that is one of the -- I believe going to be one of the key initiatives of not just this government but the future of government in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister. Oral questions, Member for Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm hoping this is the last time I have to ask this question. When will the Emerge Stronger Plan be complete.

Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Honourable Premier.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I'd like to say the Emerging Stronger package will be done now, and it could have been done two months ago and put out there if I was going to take 100 percent control. And that would not be appropriate. We've talked about partnerships.

So I do know that people are waiting for it. I want to say that on March 26th, quite awhile ago actually, we presented the draft of the Emerging Stronger to the Accountability and Oversight Committee. So I'm hoping that all Members had seen that draft at that time.

We got a response back, and a revised document was sent to Accountability and Oversight on May 11th. If you don't have a copy, let me know, and I'll get it back again to you.

After that process was done, that we worked with Regular MLAs on what they wanted to see in it, then we worked with the Indigenous governments, because those are critical partners.

So we provided all of the document to the Indigenous governments. And we just closed the feedback on that last Tuesday. This week, we've been providing it to the Association of Communities for the Municipal Governments' input and the Business Advisory Council, and their input is being incorporated.

We will be, as I said in my sessional statement, tabling a draft in this session within these seven days, and it will still be open for public; it will still be open for feedback. This is going to have to be a living document. We don't know when this is coming. So this will always be changed. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess my other concern is that we have a number of different documents that speak to different areas of the economy. We have film strategies, art strategies, agricultural strategies, mineral resource strategies. We have a number of different documents, and I know there are many areas that the government is working.

So to me, I view this Emerge Stronger Plan as really new items, things that we are doing that we have not already done. But in order to do that, it really comes down to money, Mr. Speaker. There's no point of creating another plan without some special funding towards it.

So my question for the Premier is when we release the Emerge Stronger Plan, will there be funding associated with it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member is aware in seeing the draft document, that some of the things, absolutely, have budget lines to them. There are some things that are and were not priorities. Universal Childcare, we never had that before. Those things are in our priorities already. Those things have action plans. They have things attached.

Some of them, Mr. Speaker, will not be, have budgets attached to them at that time; they will have to go through the process that we all go through, the mains and the infrastructure or the capital. So until those processes are done, you won't see.

But, Mr. Speaker, not everything takes money. And some money is not going to be ours. Just because we have to go through processes does not mean that I won't stop lobbying support from the federal government. Like I said, the Federal government, their budget aligns quite well with what our needs are. And we've worked hard over this last year and a half to build strong relationships with the federal government, and that work has paid off in seeing what is in the budget.

So we will continue to have strong relationships and strong talks with the Federal government to get as much support as we can. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Honourable Premier. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.

Merci, Monsieur le President. Sorry. I didn't give the Minister and Municipal Community Affairs a heads-up, but I've received a number of calls, emails, about the briefing that we had on flooding, and I wanted to take this opportunity to follow up on some concerns that have been raised with me.

First off, I've heard a number of concerns around how the assessment of damages is being done or could be done. And can the Minister tell us whether communities have the ability to hire their -- or a First Nation would have the ability to hire their own assessors, get the work done, and seek reimbursement. Merci, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Minister responsibility for Municipal and Community Affairs.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. MACA has hired an assessor that will be starting early next week. So we'll be going into Jean Marie, and we'll be going into Fort Simpson. They will be working in collaboration with the leadership in those specific communities.

And also the -- this is a team that has been hired. It's not an individual. And they are northern based. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.