Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to offer our sincere thanks to the many people and groups who were involved in the 2018 Arctic Winter Games held in the South Slave Region from March 18th to March 24th.

I acknowledge Mr. Greg Rowe, President of the Arctic Winter Games Society, his dedicated Board of Directors and staff, whose efforts over many months resulted in the delivery of a very successful Games. All Northwest Territories residents should be proud.

I would like to recognize Mayor Lynn Napier-Buckley of Fort Smith, Mayor Brad Mapes of Hay River, and Chief Roy Fabian of the...

As the Member notes, we do have a very big mandate to address and work on and we have made that commitment as the government to get those mandate commitments done. I know that the Government of Canada has worked on a youth council, and that's something new that they have addressed this year. We are working on a mandate commitments as well as the general business of government, so it's when we are giving new direction on something like a youth council or policy. I mean, our priorities are making sure that we focus on our mandate commitments that we made at the beginning of this 18th Assembly.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I agree that the Youth Parliament is an exciting opportunity for young people to become engaged and involved in politics. I think we had a really good opportunity to see that during the most recent Youth Parliament.

Beyond the Youth Parliament, I don't think that there has been any action taken to establish a year-round youth council in this government or previous governments. As the Minister responsible for Youth, I will be happy to receive any recommendations from the Member, or committee, or any Member of the Legislative Assembly on how we can address...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Monday, May 28, 2018, I will move that Bill 18, An Act to Amend the Cities, Towns and Villages Act, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I mentioned, we do have the Rent Supplement Program that we help with our families that are in need. We also have programs through ECE in terms of income support. We do know that there are a lot of NGOs that do a lot of great work, working with us to address some of the core housing needs across the Northwest Territories, and the Member mentions that we do have a family of six. In some of our small communities, where we don't even have housing, those numbers go up, and that's what we need to work on addressing right across the Northwest Territories. We do have high waiting lists for housing...

As I mentioned earlier, as well, we do have the Community Housing Support Initiative, as well as the Rent Supplement Program, a lot of work that the Housing Corporation has done over this government to address those needs, and working with the NGOs, and giving them some of the rent supplements so they can help work with us to house and address some of these housing concerns that the Member has mentioned.

As I mentioned, one of the ways we're doing this is through the community housing support initiatives. We do have some really good partnerships with some of our Indigenous governments currently, and we're going to continue to work with them, but we're open to working with community governments as well as Indigenous governments, to see how we can work together to address some of the housing needs that we see in our communities. We are committed, we are willing to meet with our Indigenous governments moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I do look forward to working with committee, as well as our stakeholders, on addressing the core housing needs throughout the Northwest Territory. The next NWT community survey will commence in January 2019, and as I mentioned, if the Member does have any specific communities or is saying that work is not being done in some of the communities, if he can let me know a little bit more of the specifics, we can look at addressing it. Like I said, I will give a more detailed presentation to committee, or to Members if they would like, upon their request.

First and foremost, I just want to thank my staff within MACA for the work that they do. They do have a very extensive work to do with all of our communities throughout the Northwest Territories, as well as youth and volunteers who we do work with. You know, I don't want to say that we are not fully resourced, but I want to make sure that the work that we set out in our mandate and the work that we do with our community governments and hamlets, that work gets done, because those are essential services that we provide to residents of the Northwest Territories. To take them away from that kind...

Yes, I do recall making that commitment. Work to date, there hasn't been much work done on it. I will have to bring it to the Committees at Cabinet to look forward, but any other suggestions that the Member or standing committee can provide us in terms of what we should be doing, we would really appreciate that. We are obviously all working together to address some of these issues. I welcome any suggestions from the Members moving forward. I will bring that to Committee of Cabinet to look at how we can move forward on that.