Alfred Moses

I really appreciate the work that the SPCA does throughout the Northwest Territories as well as our local SPCA groups in the communities where they do the work. I've also mentioned this is also the responsibility of our community governments, our municipal governments. We will be working with them. I can be prepared to provide my support in terms of speaking with the NWT Association of Communities. We will be having a meeting coming up this month, and I know this has been an issue for the Member and the SPCA, as well. I will make sure that this topic will get addressed at the next NWT...

As the Member noted in his statement, the GNWT has provided the SPCA with one-time funding back in 2018. I appreciate the Member bringing this up, and we did respond late last year in terms of some of the questions that he's bringing up again today. I am not aware or certain of any of the areas or departments where the SPCA has applied for funding. Unfortunately, through my department, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, we don't currently offer any funding programs that would either offer core funding to the SPCA, nor do we currently see any fit with other application-based...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, from February 15 to March 3, 2019, athletes from the Northwest Territories will be representing our territory at the 2019 Canada Winter Games in Red Deer, Alberta. This event is an important celebration of Canadian sport and culture. It will be the largest event of its kind ever hosted in Red Deer and central Alberta, and one of the largest in Alberta since the 1988 Calgary Olympics.

During the past year, our northern athletes have been preparing themselves physically and mentally. Our athletes will be competing in archery, badminton, biathlon, cross-country...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I mentioned in my Minister's statement, the overall plan is to get a community housing plan in all of our 33 communities. Right now, we have six. We have three that we have actually signed agreements to participate in, and I mentioned those. They were Whati, Fort Liard, and Paulatuk. We are working with another three communities; Deline, Jean Marie, and K'atlodeeche First Nations.

As we have been getting these programs, we only have so much staff to get out and work on facilitating these community plans. They have been doing a great job getting into the communities...

One of the opportunities I will have this week is to bring up such concerns as that with our federal government to look and see how we can access more funding for education, creating awareness, a promotional campaign, and I think that all jurisdictions will probably have the same type of focus when we have the meeting on that agenda item. We are also going through a territorial sports strategy and working with our partners, as well as our territorial sport organizations. I think this is the time to have those discussions and I encourage anyone who might be going through something like this. It...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I just want to thank the Member for bringing this very serious and disturbing issue to Members of the House, as well as all our residents across the Northwest Territories. I can assure the Member that the department and the organizations that we do work with do support the Northwest Territories athletes and that we take the responsibility related to the protection of our youth and those who are participating, whether it's in sport, recreation, or even in the arts, very seriously.

Our current requirements include the necessity for coaches to...

Yes, we are already doing that. We have reached out to private sector. We are having partnerships. We are doing some pilot projects across the Northwest Territories. We are learning from some past decisions that were made and have taken a better approach to ensure that our investments, the dollars that we are spending, is going as far as they can and meeting the needs of our housing situations throughout the NWT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I mentioned in my Minister's statement, as well, we are looking at doing a needs assessment with all of our communities and community housing plans. We would also encourage the private sector to invest in affordable housing. We do have the Community Support Initiative that we can work with, whether it is Indigenous governments or private industry. The Co-Investment Fund is another opportunity that we can work on addressing these issues. I encourage the private industry to reach out to us at the NWT Housing Corporation to have those discussions. Obviously, if we can get other partnerships...

I have made statements in the House on all the programs, the initiatives that we are doing through the NWT Housing Corporation, and I appreciate the Member making some good comments with our LHOs, our district offices, as well, trying to get out to the communities to address the needs and the maintenance and the operations, which is always a big issue. We are trying to address those, as well. Even, we are working with people who are in the home ownership.

The Member had mentioned senior housing. We do have a senior housing planning study that we are going to be using to look at where we need to...

I don't currently have a timeline for all 33 communities right now. As I mentioned in my Minister's statement, we do have to do a needs assessment. As I mentioned as well, one of the lessons learned through the Voices on Housing survey was the importance of local voices and local input in creating these housing plans. As I mentioned, it is going to require five steps; the pre-planning phase, the needs assessment, which is very important, as well as the housing plan, implementation, and monitoring. We want to have very good agreements in place with the communities as we move forward, the...