Caroline Cochrane

I agree. It's totally unreasonable that people who are homeowners are people who can't access services. I heard a story once when I first started that somebody had applied in one of the smaller communities, and it may have been the honourable MLA's communities, had applied for some repair programs, and we gave them a grant of $10,000. By the time they paid for their contractor to come in, stay, travel, stay in their community, they got a kitchen sink for $10,000, Mr. Speaker. That is not okay, and that is not reasonable. In order to address that in a reasonable way, I have changed the program...

The Northwest Territories Housing Corporation does try to work with communities. We do try to support local labour. Sometimes, though, the proposals that come in are just not doable; their bids are actually not reasonable. So sometimes we do have to go outside of the community. We do try to stay within the Northwest Territories, though, so again, we do try to support the communities as much as possible. We will look at negotiated contracts under the Negotiated Contracts Policy to actually help communities to build up their capacity; not for large corporations that have been in business for...

No, the department doesn't consider the Children and Youth Resiliency Program as part of its total for sports and recreation funding.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the money does differ between communities. In the budget, we had $825,000 in sports and recreation funding that we annually give to the community governments. Depending on the community size, et cetera, they range between $15,000 and $85,000 in sports and recreation funding annually. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Like I had stated earlier, prioritizing, we have already met with the chief. We are waiting for him to come back with a proposal to us on how he will provide the work. I should also state that there are six other homes on the reserve that have sat empty for over a decade. It is a sin, Mr. Speaker.

The reason they have sat empty is because of land tenure. It has always been an issue that the land belonged to the federal government and so we could not get it. These buildings were new, sitting empty, with people needing homes, so not only are we looking at the public housing. We are also looking...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Currently, the properties, the 10 units that we're talking about, three of them are occupied and seven need repairs. We have actually met with Chief Fabian, January 19th, actually, when my department went down to talk to him, and there are a couple of things we're doing with it. It's really exciting. Like I stated many times in this House, each community has different needs when it comes to housing, so we're looking at my community housing plans. Part of that was working with Chief Fabian, so with the 10 public housing units that are on reserve land, there have always...

Currently, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs provides $8.3 million for sport and recreation programs. That includes $4.7 million from the Western Canada Lottery Fund revenues and $3.6 million from the Government of the NWT operation funding for Municipal and Community Affairs.

Mr. Speaker, yes, the proposed bill that was submitted to standing committee does have a clause in it that allows the dispersal of funds to cover multi-sport games. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I do worry a little bit about the Municipality of Yellowknife being able to access the hotel tax levy, although I must state that they have never had it before. My understanding in working with the Minister of Infrastructure is that there was funding last year provided for tourism through the Northern Frontier Visitors Association. That funding actually expires at the end of this year, but those are normal contracting procedures, that funding expires at the end of a year or two years or three years, and they rewrite it.

My understanding at this point is that that money that was provided to the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am a bit confused with the question, however, because none of the municipalities have actually approached me as the Minister and asked me to help coordinate their work. If the municipalities do approach me, my job is to support the municipalities. If the municipalities approach me and ask for support, we will do whatever we can to support them. Thank you. Mr. Speaker.