Thank you, Minister for Housing NWT. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife Centre.

Alright, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm going to have the occasion, of course, now to return to my Member's statement, not fully, obviously, but the subject I raised, which is the encampment fatigue process and the formalizing of a policy so we know what we're working with. So, Mr. Speaker, my questions are directed to the Minister of housing, of course, as you can imagine, and I'd like to ask her, what can we do about getting -- or I should say, what can we do about creating a transparent policy on encampments? Because, Mr. Speaker, there seems to be a variety of responses, and some of them are fair, some of them are reasonable, and we want to make sure that we have public input in it, and so people understand we have a progressive policy that's responsive but fair and has good reasons why we're doing or not doing something. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Yellowknife Centre. Minister responsible for Housing NWT.

Mr. Speaker, again, a number, a really important question, considering the number of encampments in and around the city over the last few years. As Housing NWT, we commit to developing a standard operating procedure on how we will, within government, work together and with other partners for spring of 2026. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we'll have lawyers saying we have a government obligation to do something. We have lay people that say that that's untrue. We have technocrats that say it's somewhere in the middle, Mr. Speaker. Why are we waiting to come forward with a policy that would make most of this at least follow a consistent direction? And I think that's usually where I stand at the beginning, which is we need some level of consistency and we can bleed fairness and whatever necessary into the mix. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I didn't get the question, but fairness and equity, yeah, that's really important how we apply this across the board. Again, really important as a government that we apply this, but with the encampments over the summer, we've asked them and we've worked with them and we've counseled them and we've provided them weekly visits and we're working with the integration service delivery team and Housing NWT and the Yellowknife Partnerships Committee. The one big thing with all of this encampment discussion, understanding not many people want to live in shelters, but there is shelter space available. And applying a policy across the board is important and having that public engagement is important. So, again, like I committed to, we'll have a policy in place. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister responsible for Housing NWT. Final supplementary. Member from the Yellowknife Centre.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the last part of the question was actually exactly where the Minister just went, which is I'm concerned about the declaration made by people in absence of a policy. So in other words, they say shelters aren't safe, they have nowhere to go, they say we can't cohabitate with their partners, which in a lot of ways is wrong, but we don't have shelters that respond that. Will this new policy take into effect that if people are making declarations of that nature or citing these types of concerns, we can come up with a policy that is flexible but sensitive enough to the broader concerns. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The difficulty with Housing NWT and with housing in general is we need to come up with comprehensive solutions across the board for housing. And it's not a one size fits all. And we've seen that. We've seen that in encampments. We've seen that with homelessness. We see that with elders that are unable to pay their rent. Housing NWT, we have to move beyond what we're currently doing, and I've said this before, we can't just be market and public housing or market and social housing. We have to look at transitional housing, we have to look at supportive living, we have to look at all possibilities across the housing continuum. But, again, we need the support of all partners, including Indigenous governments, including the federal government and, hopefully, hopefully, Building Canada Homes will provide some of that support, but we'll see what happens there. But again, we need comprehensive solutions and it can't be one size fits all, because it's certainly failing us at this time, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister responsible for Housing NWT. Oral questions. Member from Inuvik Boot Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, following up on my statement on infrastructure projects in Inuvik around Arctic sovereignty and security. Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Infrastructure. Could the Minister ensure that the commitment, the funding commitment to build a new airport terminal building in Inuvik is still in fact on the books.

Thank you. Thank you, Member from Inuvik Boot Lake. Minister of Infrastructure.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Inuvik Airport, as we know, is a key transportation area to the North, and a lot of work has been done to get the new terminal going. A lot of good hard work done by previous MLAs and Ministers. And it's well on its way. The process has been started a long time ago, and we hope to have more information soon about the air terminal. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and that's great news from the Minister. I appreciate that. Can I ask if the Minister is still committed, or the department is still committed to working with the regional contractors, regional Indigenous governments in the region when this project begins in full. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is part of the process, and like I said earlier, this process is well underway. I think it's no secret that we've tendered this, and it's come back out, but we're in the process of getting this out there, and we're committed to working with local contractors in the area. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of Infrastructure. Final supplementary. Member from Inuvik Boot Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you again to the Minister for that. He mentioned it was tendered earlier this year. Can the Minister give an update on the current status of the tender process and when we anticipate this project started? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think it's no secret that the current process has been suspended due to a court proceeding, so I cannot speak about it and we'll hopefully hear something soon in the new year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of Infrastructure. Oral questions. Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs has repeatedly referred to the importance of the Incident Command System when questioned on emergency management and public safety. The independent action report makes three separate ICS recommendations, but the GNWT has only fully agreed to implement one of those, for one of those recommendations to mandate and maintain ICS training for elected officials and emergency managers. The Minister is only making that trainable available to MLAs. Why isn't the Minister ensuring that that training is mandatory for all public officials in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Member from Range Lake. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The ICS training is the standard across Canada. That training is being provided to all -- sorry, offered to all communities who are interested in it to help with the community emergency plans and their preparedness. The public service has had many workshops to have their staff trained and have the ability to stand up staff for surge capacity. Also, I think it's important to remember that as elected officials and somebody who's been involved in emergencies in the past, we tend to want to get involved. And I think that's the important part of the mandatory ICS training for elected officials within the GNWT, is to clarify our roles and responsibilities during emergencies. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as our emergency management system is made up of volunteers and is ad hoc to emergencies as they arise, having everyone trained in ICS shouldn't be an offer, it should be a mandatory requirement. It's legislated in Alberta, the independent after-action report cites this as a best practice. Will the Minister legislate ICS in either regulations or in legislative amendments so we can ensure who is responsible for emergency management in the Northwest Territories is adequately trained in ICS. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like anything else we do, I don't think any community would appreciate if the government went in there and told them that they have to get ICS training for their volunteers in their communities. We support the training, we support the community emergency plans, we support their EMO organizations to provide the training. Anybody within the GNWT who's involved in the EMO organization has the ICS training or will receive ICS training to support any emergencies for communities, local emergencies, reI'm going to start by saying that we don't have any emergencies for communities, local emergencies, regional emergencies, and our territorial emergencies. Although it would be nice to legislate and enforce that everybody that's involved has to have this, we have to understand that we have a lot of small communities where, you know, we wouldn't be able to hire people full-time within these small communities to do that. There are communities that volunteers are very important, volunteer fire departments are very important, and this also relates to emergency management organizations. There is members within the EMO organizations that are volunteers, and we have to support them that way. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.