Alfred Moses

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...

In most cases, the organizations that do apply for and receive funding through the NGO Stabilization Fund are receiving core funding through social envelope departments such as the Department of Health and Social Services, in some cases Education, Culture and Employment. Really, in most cases, these are programs aimed at providing direct support for our residents across the Northwest Territories, through my department, Municipal and Community Affairs. As I mentioned, right now, we don't see any type of funding programs that would offer any type of core funding to the organization in question.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and yes, I do agree with that statement and that the SPCA does play an important role throughout the Northwest Territories in managing dog control. In Inuvik, we have a very active SPCA group as well that does a lot of good work in the region and for the communities. At the same time, Mr. Speaker, I do have to say that I do believe that our community governments also have to play a very important role in terms of managing dog-control issues that are local to the communities and that we all have got to work together to address the issue that the Member has raised in his...

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...

I would encourage the child, as I mentioned, to speak to somebody who they trust, who they can speak up to, whether it is a teacher, a parent, a close friend, or perhaps somebody of adult supervision in their lives, whether it is a care provider, but I encourage them to speak up, as I mentioned in the previous response. Anybody who is going through this doesn't deserve it, any type of abuse. I will be bringing it up at the national sports meeting that I will have later this week and see how we can address that, look at getting funding, and how we can create more awareness and prevention...

As I mentioned, all of our partners that we work with do take their responsibilities very seriously when working with our youth and our athletes. That's something I'll have to take a look into in terms of the policy for having that information shared with parents and the general public, as it is in a legal term, but it's something that we need to look at. Next week or later this week I will be meeting with my federal, provincial, and territorial counterparts in Red Deer prior to the Canada Summer Games, and we will be discussing it. One of the agenda items, actually, is prevention of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation is helping to address the high cost of living in our territory by implementing northern solutions for northern housing. We are working with other governments and housing stakeholders to support Indigenous and local governments in their housing aspirations and create initiatives to address homelessness. As part of its strategic renewal, the Housing Corporation is developing community housing plans to guide and support strategic development and investment in each community.

In 2017, one of the key findings of the...

I will just take, for example, the partnership that we have with the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation. That is a great partnership that we have developed with them. It is a good opportunity, as well, to share with other Indigenous governments as well as private industry on how we can work to address whether it is market rent or public housing needs, transitional housing.

This co-investment fund, like I have mentioned, we did get a $60 million carve-out on that. It was application-based and very flexible on how we spend those dollars. We want to make sure that information gets out to anybody, any...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As Members know, and when we go and visit our constituents, sometimes one of our biggest issues is finding housing for our nurses, RCMP, teachers, and we want to try to address that. The Housing Corporation typically is the sole housing provider in some of our rural and remote communities. Sometimes, our developers have a hard time doing business or building houses. At the same time, we don't want to be disrupting the market unit. We have tried in some communities and we have had some contractors bring concerns.

One thing that I can tell the Member, as the Members know...

As I mentioned, we are going to be getting information from our local leadership and our local membership on what their priorities are in their community. That way, it can help us better identify where we are going to put our investments as a government, and the investments that we got from the federal government, how we are going to be spending those dollars to meet the needs of each of the communities as we roll out these community housing plans. That is going to take input from our local leadership, our local membership, our stakeholders, and working with our partners to address the housing...