Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll have vice-president Jim Martin respond. Thank you.

Vice-president Martin.

Thank you. Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I'm wondering why when the government operates it, it has a $2 million budget but when a third party NGO operates it, it has a budget of $560,000? Thank you.

Thank you. Minister Chinna.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This comes with a lot more different expenses. And like I said, this is -- for me, this is a one-off. I don't want to see housing coming back and administering and taking over shelters. This was an emergency that had happened in Inuvik, and we just did not have any NGOs, nobody to step up and take over the responsibility.

Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. So just so that I can get this straight, no NGO could afford to operate a shelter at the budget they were given by the housing corporation, so everybody walked away from the table. So housing corporation stepped in and said we are going to operate this shelter because we need a shelter in Inuvik, and the cost of doing that properly is $2 million. So now the government has come back and said it is too expensive to operate a shelter in Inuvik, we're going to get a third party to do it, and we're going to give them a quarter of what we spent in order to operate the shelter properly, is that right? Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister Chinna.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I hear the Member's frustration. But this did not only have to do with funding. This had to do with the training. This had to do with the staffing. This had to do with what was actually being dealt with at the ground level. Safety was a major issue. We did end up having a fire in Inuvik as well too. We did end up losing one of our warming shelters. It's not only the NGOs looking at them not operating this shelter in Inuvik. We had this put out for an RFP, and we had no submissions. We had no interest. And what were we to be doing in Inuvik, and we needed to step in. We had a couple of deaths that had happened during that time as well too with people freezing. This was an emergency, and housing had to step in. And it didn't only have to do with just the funding that was there but we would like to see this go back as a -- back to the NGOs. And we do have two interested parties right now, which we're very lucky to have them. But the Indigenous groups weren't interested in taking this over as well too. We had an emergency in Inuvik. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I agree that there is an emergency in Inuvik when people are at risk of dying because they're freezing to death or people are not able to flee instances of family violence and find shelters to go to. So I agree with the Minister that it was an emergency. Where I don't agree with the Minister is that they are acknowledging that it is more expensive than they had originally anticipated to run a shelter so they're stepping out. When committee travelled to Inuvik, we heard firsthand from people that it is not realistic to expect an NGO in small communities to find third-party funding in order to operate a shelter. And the original contract that went out had an expectation that NGOs went and sourced their own funding to make it work. And so I find this very frustrating and very unrealistic. But I'm on a time crunch, and so I think I've made my point there. I want to know what other shelters are funded by that emergency shelters budget, please.

Madam Chair, I'll have Jim Martin respond. Thank you.

Vice-president Martin.

Thank you. Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. So, Madam Chair, that is even for all of those places, and I understand that this is not the only funding pot because I believe Salvation Army also receives money from elsewhere. But if you take out Salvation Army, which we really shouldn't because it is still an emergency shelter, but if you take that out and you have the five remaining shelters in communities, or even if you take out YWCA, one of them, you have about $600,000 for each shelter to work with. It's not enough money to operate shelters notwithstanding the point either that that means we've got Inuvik, Yellowknife, Fort Simpson. We have 33 communities, and we have a housing crisis. We have overcrowding. We have 900 people on the waitlist. From those 900 people on the waitlist, we have another 487 people who have arrears that wouldn't qualify to put their name on a waitlist. We have an issue here where we do not have the housing that the Northwest Territories require. We do not have the housing to keep people alive. And so turning around and putting in $3 million to keep people alive is not realistic. And we hear almost every week from the MLA from Hay River South about how this is not saving lives and it is not doing its job. So I'm going to leave that there because the next question I have is any of the funding from homelessness initiatives earmarked for youth because our youth are also screaming out for housing solutions to keep them safe when they're living in places that are not safe. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister Chinna.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And this issue was brought up to me as well too in looking at housing homeless youth. The thing that we -- we don't have a shelter -- I don't know if we support the current shelter that is here in Yellowknife, but they weren't of age to sign a tenancy agreement contract. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. So that brings me to other questions of somebody needs to be able to sign a tenancy agreement contract in order to access emergency shelter funding? That doesn't really add up for me.

One of the things I want to point out here to housing corporation, and I hope they'll take very seriously, is we have a tremendous amount of youth in this territory who are suffering from homelessness. We have a shelter here in Yellowknife, thankfully, and I wish there was one in every community that could directly serve our youth that are suffering, but the one in Yellowknife here has ten rooms for long-term stays, 20 beds for night-to-night stays, and every single night they end up having to turn youth away. That's devastating.

We have heard firsthand that the young girls who use those shelters actually have to sit down and talk to each other and decide who's going to have a safe place to stay that night and who's going to go find alternate solutions. So we need to make sure that youth shelters are seeing this funding as well and that this line item is increased to actually be representative of the work that shelters are doing. And if we're not going to create houses upstream, then we need to make sure that we have emergency shelters to keep people alive downstream. Thank you.

Thank you. Minister Chinna.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I agree with the Member as well too, and I just -- you know, through the homelessness strategy, we will be seeing changes throughout this government and looking at the collaboration and the approach. There's additional information and comments that are made towards that strategy but I hear where the Member's coming from. Thank you. I'll take it as a comment.