Caroline Cochrane

Mr. Speaker, our government made a commitment in its mandate to work in partnership with Aboriginal governments on a training program for First Nations governments with municipal-like responsibilities. I am very proud of the work that the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs has done to design and launch a training program to help improve the governance and management capacity of these governments. Mr. Speaker, in order to move this initiative forward, Municipal and Community Affairs, through the School of Community Government, has partnered with Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada...

Due to our working relationship, our partnerships with the five sports and recreational associations throughout the Northwest Territories, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs does not currently track the information on the location of the selected camps. As so, we do not have that information, what specifically is provided in Yellowknife as to other communities.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Respectfully, a lot of the bands and designated authorities actually do provide municipal services. Not all of them do. We do have 33 communities within the Northwest Territories. However, municipal governments are different, as stated before. Although job descriptions will have similarities, municipal governments are not responsible for promoting the language or the culture within their communities, and so job descriptions will have to be changed. They also are not responsible for some of the health and social services and the justice supports that designated...

At this point, we are just negotiating with the federal government to see if they will provide funding for the delivery of this support, so it is a little bit premature to report on what exactly this delivery would look like. Once we have the information and a partnership, then we can look at how we deliver it.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am as confused as the Member in trying to understand why we got short-changed in the northern housing strategy, and so I am actually flying down to Ottawa this Sunday to meet with the Minister responsible for the CMHC, Mr. Duclos. Mr. Duclos, right after the budget was released, did give me a call the next day and promised me that he would provide me a funding formula, because we do support our other territories; however, Nunavut has double of the amount of needs for housing and got eight times the funding. We are asking for an explanation for why we got short-changed...

We are working diligently with the federal government as well, and CMHC has made an agreement to put a hold on the declining funding just for this year, but they have still stated that in 2038, those operating and maintenance monies will be gone. With that in effect, we have to look at ways that we can actually support our residents in the Northwest Territories in meeting their housing needs.

At this point, I am not looking at increasing our public housing units, but I do believe that the Rent Supplement Program for the City of Yellowknife would address that need. For example, if I build one...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Diversifying our economy was one of the priorities identified within this Legislative Assembly, and so it is important that municipalities also look at diversifying their economies, as well. Tourism is a great opportunity within the Northwest Territories, as proven by our capital city and the City of Yellowknife, so I would recommend that all municipalities, towns, et cetera, contact the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment to find out what programs and services they have that they can actually access to support tourism within their municipalities.

The Department of Municipal and Community Affairs has done a cross-jurisdictional analysis of hotel levies to see within other jurisdictions how they are presented, how they are run, what the costs look like, et cetera, so we have done that research. We are also working with the City of Yellowknife very closely. We have had over six meetings with them since October, developing a discussion paper that we will be bringing forward to other stakeholders.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize a member from a constituency from Range Lake, also the chair of the Montessori school, Mr. David Wasylciw. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Sport North right now has the Kids Sport program, and they provide support to families that have a demonstrated economic need, so lower income families can apply for that to access sports and recreation facilities. We also have the two regional recreation associations that will take applications to address accessibility, and the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs is willing to provide the information to any families that need support in not knowing where to get the applications for these supports provided.