Colleagues, I hereby table the 2022-2023 Annual Report of the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories.

Tabling of documents. Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the Statement of Consistency for Bill 3: Carbon Tax Repeal Act. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member from Range Lake. Tabling of documents. Notices of motion.

Colleagues, we will take a brief break, and then we will move on to the rest of the agenda. Thank you.

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Motions. Member from the Deh Cho.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

WHEREAS access to safe and adequate housing is a fundamental human right essential for the overall well-being and dignity of individuals;

AND WHEREAS recognizing housing as a human right is consistent with international human rights principles and obligations, including those outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;

AND WHEREAS the Government of Canada has recognized the right to adequate housing is a fundamental human right as affirmed in international law;

NOW THEREFORE I MOVE, second by the Member for Range Lake, that the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly acknowledge and affirm housing as a fundamental human right;

AND FURTHER, that the implementation of housing as a fundamental human right within the laws of the Northwest Territories and policies of the Government of the Northwest Territories be referred to Standing Committee on Social Development for further study.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member. The motion is in order. To the motion. Member from the Deh Cho.

Mr. Speaker, I move this motion because the Government of the Northwest Territories -- I want the Government of the Northwest Territories to acknowledge that housing is a fundamental human right for residents of the Northwest Territories. This has been recognized by the United Nations, by several countries including Canada.

The Government of Canada amended the National Housing Strategy Act to recognize housing as a human right. In the preamble of the National Housing Strategy Act, it reads: Housing is essential to the inherent dignity and well-being of a person. A national housing strategy would support the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing.

Mr. Speaker, by acknowledging housing as a human right, it means that the GNWT acknowledges that housing is inherent to a person's dignity and well-being. According to the United Nations, acknowledging housing as a human right affirms that the government's housing policies recognizing that all people have the right to live somewhere in security, peace, and dignity.

Recognizing housing as a human right means that the GNWT must evaluate the housing programs and policies to ensure that they are achieving what they are intended to do which is serve those most in need, reduce homelessness, and increasing housing affordability, accessibility, and suitability.

Recognizing housing as a human right aligns ourself with international and national law which may open opportunities for collaboration.

It has been said in this House many times the NWT is in a housing crisis. Mr. Speaker, this Assembly knows there is a lack of housing options. Homes are in need of repair. They are unaffordable. They are inadequately maintained or unsuitable for the family size. Many homes are overcrowded. Many people in small communities couch surf.

Homelessness is a real problem, Mr. Speaker, and we need to do better. We need to recognize that housing is essential to a person's dignity, affirming housing as a human right -- affirming housing as a human right and work towards this realization. Mahsi.

From the Deh Cho. To the motion. Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to rise in support of my honourable friend, the Member for Deh Cho's motion. I think what's significant about this is it's not just an affirmation to declare housing a priority or housing important but housing as a fundamental right of Northerners. And this is very significant because taking a rights-based approach to the issue of housing would give new clarity to how fundamental it is to our citizens and, in particular, to Indigenous peoples who have struggled with a lack of affordable, suitable, and adequate housing for a very long time. And this is a perennial issue that led to the creation of the housing forum and increased collaboration, not just with this government but with the federal government as well. And I hope that we will be able to use this motion as the springboard to look into how all of our policies as the Government of the Northwest Territories address housing and whether or not they're addressing it adequately because taking a rights-based approach is very different than a -- you know, a privileged-based approach, let's say; an approach that says, you know, if you meet the criteria you can afford this program, we'll subsidize your housing or social housing or a rental supplement or whatever it happens to be. But instead to say we need to give everyone a home, we need to ensure everyone is housed, and we cannot -- we cannot bear to see people who are unhoused, and I think this motion's very important to start our journey as the 20th Assembly towards meeting that priority that we've all set collectively and achieving a more equitable and prosperous future because housing, of course, is not just for individuals. It's also for industry. It touches every aspect of what we -- of our communities, of our economy, and of our social fabric. So I'm very pleased to support this. And I thank my honourable friend for bringing it toward, and I will be voting to support this motion. Thank you.

Thank you, Member from Range Lake. To the motion. Member from Monfwi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know that I've been advocating for housing for our constituents, and we know that we are in a housing crisis in the Northwest Territories. It's not just in Northwest Territories. It's across Canada we know we are in a really bad situation to provide more affordable housing and to increase housing stock, especially in small communities.

In small communities, we never heard of homelessness before, but lately we do have a lot of homelessness and we have warming shelter. Why do we have warming shelter in small communities? If we had more housing to give away to our constituents or for our -- or to provide for our constituents, there would be no need for warming shelter. And I know that there are some people in the small communities, they are against the warming shelter because it doesn't do anything to help to provide more housing. It creates more of a homelessness. That's what I've been hearing from people in small communities.

And we know that there's a lot of people on the waitlist as well. There's a lot of families. We have families of six, with six children that were on the waitlist recently, and there are -- and there are some people who have been on the waitlist for more than two years, and those are the ones that I've been advocating for and they're still on the waitlist. Even for single unit, we don't have enough unit to allocate to our constituents that really deserve. A lot of them just want their own place. Once -- I know that having no home does have an impact on mental health. It really does affect their mental health, and that's where we know that there's a lot of problems with addictions. And it does have an impact on the well-being of a child. And because of -- because there's not enough housing, a lot of our kids are in care. Some parents, they give up their children voluntarily to the system because there's no housing for them, no home for them. And those things have to stop. And for that reason, I really do support and I'm very grateful, thankful, to Deh Cho and to Range Lake, yes, to Range Lake, for bringing this motion forward that it is -- it is a fundamental human right. So thank you.

Thank you, Member from Monfwi. To the motion. Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too rise to give support to this motion. As you know, yesterday I brought the issue up of housing and there were some questions I brought up. Again, the housing corporation is going on 52 years old. I mentioned the policies just don't work for the people here in the Northwest Territories. And, you know, I just want to just briefly touch on that. But at the same time, you know, we had 70 years of residential school, federal day school and, you know, I was kind of hoping that -- and I did mention this to Cabinet and some of the Ministers there as well, that we're going to have to start thinking outside the box because the money that we get from CMHC's just not there. You know, we got 14 more years left in this housing corporation mandate and -- but the thing is that, you know, for 70 years, you know, we've been in residential school, federal day school where, you know, Government of Canada wanted to take the Indian out of the child for at least 70 years. And here we are today, our institutions are full, our jails are full, our people are on the streets. We got homelessness. Housing's still a big issue, and it's one of this government's mandate for the next -- we got four top priorities. So anyway I think moving forward, though, we're going to have to start working together with Indigenous governments and really go after the Government of Canada now because Canada's going to have to take ownership of this problem we're having here today, and this government doesn't have the money. And we're going to have to come up with a plan for the next 70 years to deal with this issue because they're the one that created this problem. And it's up to us to work together to try and go and chase that money down from Ottawa. At the end of the day, they got to take ownership of that. So I do support this motion because of that.

The other thing I want to mention as well as we move forward, as land claims get settled here in the Northwest Territories, sooner or later we're going to have to start talking about Constitution, and that Constitution's going to have to be between the claimant groups here in the North and the Government of the Northwest Territories. And that's something that I just want to remind people of. But housing is a number one priority, and it's a housing crisis. So I do support this motion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. To the motion. Member from Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to speak to express my support for this motion and also the following motion that's closely related about taking action to address housing as a human right.

So obviously this motion would bring us in line with legislation passed at the national level. In 2019, the federal government passed the National Housing Strategy Act, and that committed organizations and governments such as ours -- or asked us to reform our own housing laws, policies, and programs to align it with a human rights perspective. So I would be pleased for us to do that now. And I think it's fitting that recently this Assembly did decide that housing would be a top priority for this Assembly. And I just wanted to point out too that I think it's important to remember that making housing a priority is more than simply an issue of physically building roofs and sticking people under them. And I wanted to quote from Jesse Thistle who is a notable Indigenous expert in housing and homelessness in Canada. And he says -- he tries to give us some more perspective on what homelessness is from an Indigenous perspective.

Indigenous homelessness is a human condition that describes First Nations, Metis, and Inuit individuals, families, or communities lacking stable, permanent, appropriate housing, or the immediate prospect, means or ability to acquire such housing. Unlike the common colonialist definition of homelessness, Indigenous homelessness is not defined as lacking a structure of habitation rather it is more fully described and understood through a composite lens of Indigenous world views. These include individuals, families, and communities isolated from their relationships to land, water, place, family, kin, each other, animals, cultures, languages, and identities.

So that's a bit of a long quote but the point is that taking action to address housing and homelessness also involves addressing some of the underlying issues that lead to inadequate housing and homelessness and trying to understand what relationships and supports have been broken to take people to this point and how those can be restored.

And I think this motion also fits well with the principle of housing first which is that people need housing first and foremost before we can expect them to move forward in other aspects of their lives, whether that's furthering their education or getting back to work or taking care of their kids or trying to heal from addictions or whatever the issues are. All of those things become impossible if you don't have a home -- or to have a house -- adequate housing.

And if those reasons are not enough to convince people, I think it's important to also point out that there are financial reasons to make housing a human right and to address homelessness. Multiple studies have shown that it is cheaper to house and support people on their path to recovery than it is to just manage their homelessness through emergency responses, police callouts, hospital work, and ultimately jail. According to a study done at McGill University through a housing first approach, we can see reductions in the price of interventions from about $20,000 per person to $6,300 per person per year. So that's a 69 percent reduction in costs. And another study done in Alberta found that those who were housed through a housing first program between 2007 and 2013 experienced significant reductions in their use of the public systems. So that was 85 percent fewer days in jail, 64 percent fewer days spent in hospital, 60 percent fewer interactions with emergency medical services, 57 percent fewer interactions with police, and so on and so on. So simply put, continuing to try to manage homelessness costs a lot more than ending it. So for all these reasons, I will be wholeheartedly supporting this motion put forward by the Member for Deh Cho and Range Lake. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. To the motion. Member from the Sahtu.

Thank you, Member from the Sahtu. Members, to the motion. Member from Nunakput.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank the Member from the Deh Cho and the Member for Range Lake for bringing this motion. It raises an important issue worthy of careful consideration by this House.

I don't think there is anyone in this Chamber who doesn't agree that we are in a housing crisis and that adequate, affordable, and suitable housing provides a foundation for people's well-being and quality of life. I am happy to see the interest of the Members in the House on the critical need for housing across the North, and the work of my colleagues is important and genuine. It comes from a good place, and this is a great start.

In my first remarks in the House back in December, I spoke about disparity and how homelessness in the Arctic and this shouldn't be thought of as an impossibility. My previous volunteer work as a member of the Inuvik Homeless Shelter Society grounded me and spurred me to advocate for those that are less fortunate and those that are homeless.

Mr. Speaker, we all agreed, as the 20th Legislative Assembly, that adequate, affordable, and suitable housing in the Northwest Territories is our number one priority. That priority will find its way into the mandate currently being developed based, in part, on the priority.

So this motion seeks to affirm housing as a human right. The right to housing is the subject of international treaties, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. These are international obligations that fall within the federal jurisdiction. As a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and other international human rights instruments, Canada has agreed to take appropriate steps towards the realization of the right to adequate housing.

At the federal level, in the National Housing Strategy Act, Canada has already legislated a right to adequate, affordable, and suitable housing as a fundamental human right. In section 4 in the National Housing Strategy Act speaks to the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing, which is acknowledgement, first, that the right to housing has not been realized; and second, that it will take significant time and resources to move towards that state. This federal Act already applies throughout Canada.

And as my colleague from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh mentioned, the federal government is the only government in Canada with the fiscal capacity and resources needed to help realize a right to housing. Under the National Housing Strategy, the federal government has been make significant investments in housing across Canada to aid with the progressive realization of a right to adequate housing. The GNWT and Housing NWT are willing partners of the federal government in all efforts to address the housing crisis in the North. However, like other provincial and territorial jurisdictions in Canada, we want to ensure there is no confusion about the federal government's responsibility for providing funding toward meeting this international legal obligation. So today Cabinet will be abstaining from the vote; however, should this motion be carried I can commit that Housing NWT will participate in the standing committee's further study on this matter. Quyananni Mr. Speaker.

Member, thank you. To the motion.

Question has been called. Does the mover wish to close the debate?

Okay, Member from YK Centre.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker; I was fine either way. There's another housing motion and I would have picked up on that one but that said, maybe I'll have less to say on the next motion. Mr. Speaker, as unlikely as it is, I'll try.

Mr. Speaker, we all know housing adequacy is a challenge in every single riding. I've been to Wrigley and I see families struggling with their opportunities. I've been to Aklavik, and I've seen people look for places to live. And they have to come to the larger centres struggling asking themselves where are -- you know, where can they live? The dignity of an individual's journey is their own but the fact is as a community, as a territory, it's our responsibility to share and help raise that dignity to ensure that -- to help ensure they're part of a working functional community and territory. It's our responsibility to ensure that we be part of the solution, a fundamental pillar that they have some type of adequate housing. And as challenging as it may be -- and it is challenging. Let us not pretend or glaze over that trying to house some of the folks out there is easy. It is not. And I tip my hat to housing and many of the social organizations that relentlessly day after day after day, Mr. Speaker, work with people trying to get them into safe environments, try to create inclusion with them, and try to make sure that in some way in their own way they can be inclusive members providing some element and form in the fabric of society.

Without housing, Mr. Speaker, without appropriate housing, we all know about the employment's struggle that they suffer with. We've heard from other Members such as mental health illness challenges. We know it doesn't necessarily create disabilities in and itself, but without housing it has the creation and power to have an overwhelming effect on those through stress do get types of disabilities, and those who have physical disabilities, Mr. Speaker, it adds even more weight. The journey is individual as I said, but as the community we must work as an integrated partner in trying to be a solution to these things.

Now, imagine this, Mr. Speaker, if we could all get out of our comfort zone for just a bare moment, could we imagine day to day one of our selves going through this individual's struggle? I bring that challenge to myself daily. Imagine what it's like when someone brings forward a concern to me. What is it like walking in their shoes? What is it like trying to find someone to feed their kids? What is it like -- I try to imagine. And then to be truthful, I struggle to fully imagine the stress that many of these people go through. I can try, but the fact is the burden shouldn't be their own.

The vulnerable people who go through this, Mr. Speaker, I know it's not a daily stress, it's probably an hour-by-hour stress about where am I going to be next? Not feeling welcome, Mr. Speaker; that shouldn't be the policy of the land. That's why this motion is very important by saying let's turn it around and make it the policy of the land to ensure we provide adequate housing.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to stress that the mover, the Member from Deh Cho, and the seconder, the Member from Range Lake, have my support and the community support of Yellowknife Centre because I think this is a journey we often forget that it's easy to say they'll figure it out on their own but maybe they're not as equipped as they are -- as we wish they could be, but that said we are part of the territory and a community, and it's our responsibility to join arm in arm when they need help. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member from Yellowknife Centre. To the motion.