Caroline Cochrane

Mr. Speaker, affordable, quality housing is one of the foundations from which we build on to meet our other life goals. As children, healthy and safe places to live allow us to learn better, to do well in school, and help us to become successful as we grow into adulthood. Establishing stable, secure housing is a goal for most people from the time they begin to contemplate leaving their own parent's home. Over the course of our lives, from young adulthood through to becoming elderly, housing can be a concern. Many families, young and old, worry about the affordability, suitability, and adequacy...

It is difficult, I have realized, being in government now, putting an actual timeline on things, and we have huge amounts of policies, procedures, and programs that we are now going through, so I can't commit to a timeline. I can commit that, by the time that I have finished, after a four-year term, the initial application to access housing will be available online. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

A new repair and renovation program is ready for implementation for seniors to support them to age in place. Repairs and renovation under this program will focus on energy efficiency to improve the cost of living for senior homeowners.

We will be amending policy to support students who live in public housing so that their education is not impacted by housing concerns. We will also be implementing a fuel-tank replacement initiative to assist homeowners to deal with a growing risk area that represents significant environmental implications. These are some of the areas that...

Yes, all new housing homes that we are building currently and over the past few years are what they call visitor-accessible. They already have wider entrances, accessible bathrooms on the ground floor, and again, we have programs to assist seniors to be able to access as many supports as they need to be able to maintain their residence or obtain residence so that they can age in place within their communities as long as possible.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is absolutely correct. There is a huge need for having support so that our seniors can age in place within their communities. The Northwest Territories Bureau of Statistics has shown that, although our population is slowly increasing, our seniors’ aging is increasing substantially. It is a huge priority for this whole government. We are working in partnership with the Department of Health and Social Services to provide the best care possible for our elders. Some of the things that we are doing with the Housing Corporation, we have care and mobility. We have...

The housing survey that was conducted by the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation is actually to be tabled tomorrow. We’re really pleased to provide that. There were over 6,000 responses, and so, in all honesty, I do not know if that one particular, it wasn’t highlighted as a major concern, but I would like to state that when we were doing the tour, I did hear within the community of Kakisa that they had concerns about after-hours support. The difficulty within that community is, currently, we only have four home ownership programs and zero public housing in that community. Because we do...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In every community that we have a local housing organization, we also have a 24-hour emergency response system in place. When those systems are called on, the emergency is moved to a priority, taking precedent over any other scheduled regular maintenance that we’re doing. If the situation is deemed not to be a priority, then it falls within the realm of regular maintenance, but we do provide a reply within a week’s business time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, within this fiscal year, we will have a new housing design that accommodates seniors so that they can live with their families. We currently use the application process where, within the application, people are identified as seniors. Their needs are taken into consideration. Seniors can apply for programs to assist them in other ways, and we are also looking at a new program that actually looks at the co-payment, to lower the amount of co-payments for lower-income people and families so that we provide better services, more appropriate services, to seniors and low-...

As was said many times in this House, when we finish getting the results from these surveys, we would be doing a full program review. Some of the issues would be very simple to deal with, some would be a little bit more difficult, and some would be tough. Land tenure is still one of those issues that we are still struggling with to figure out how to do in an equitable manner. However, in saying that, we are working with municipalities and Aboriginal governments. We are rolling out a new program that will support them, to be able to provide homeownership programs within their communities as...

It is concerning if the Member has identified that he’s heard that in other communities that they’re not sure about how to reach emergency responses with the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation. It does tell me that we need to do a better job of communicating our services. Communications of our programs and our supports was identified within the survey, hugely stating that we need to do better on that. We will be doing a much better job of communicating the programs, the supports that we have in the future. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.