Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Government of the Northwest Territories has made a commitment in its mandate to work in partnership with other orders of government to address affordable housing requirements. As Members already know, our territory has housing needs well beyond those of the rest of Canada, especially in our rural and remote communities. The Northwest Territories has the second highest level of core housing need in the country at 20 per cent while the national average is 12.5 per cent. To address this disparity, the Northwest Territories requires a long term, sustainable, and...

Thank you for acknowledging that I went to the community yesterday to specifically look at the location, et cetera. At this point, once the old hospital is emptied out, we will do a final assessment. My assumption at this point is that it won't be valuable to renovate versus tearing it down. The other really important point is that once that hospital is taken down it will be another option that Health and Social Services can look at when they're developing their long-term care for long-term care beds.

On May 25th of this year, the department has issued a new tender for a multi-year fuel supply and delivery contracts to serve the eight marine accessible communities as I stated before. The contract, once approved, will begin in 2017 and it will be a multi-year contract similar to NTCL. Also I want to raise that even though Public Works and Services doesn't transport too much of the dry goods, such as groceries, into the communities we still are concerned about that, so we will be ensuring that the supplier will be taking dry cargo as well to make sure. On a side note, we've also recently...

NTCL has advised Public Works and Services that this summer they intend to sell to all the communities that they typically served in prior years. That includes Sachs Harbour, Paulatuk, Ulukhaktok, Lutselk'e, Tulita, Fort Good Hope, Norman Wells, Tuktoyaktuk, Inuvik, and Aklavik. The fuel services division of Public Works and Services also ensure that there are fuel reserves in each of the communities to offset any unforeseen interruptions. This is a long-standing practice and we continue with that.

As stated, we do have the different regions for the income thresholds, so we take into account the cost of living, et cetera. They are also separated by the amounts of bedrooms, the counts with two bedrooms or less, three bedrooms or more, et cetera. Again, we will be doing a new threshold needs assessment within the 2017 fiscal year. There are programs in place such as the PATH which does give 55 per cent, again, for a down payment, versus in Yellowknife where it's only 5 per cent. We are trying to recognize the communities' needs and work within the communities. Our survey that will be going...

Yes, so the income thresholds will be reviewed in 2017. We do that every two years. As well, like I had said when I first started here, I am committed to being very community-focused and we are sending out a survey probably towards the end of this month that is asking each specific community what their needs are and what their priorities are. We will be developing a plan, a community-based plan, from that that identifies what the communities' issues are and what they see as needs within each separate community.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to take a moment to recognize Marie Buchanan. Marie is a constituent of Range Lake, but she is also a nurse practitioner and spent many years within the North travelling to different communities and is a real value to the Northwest Territories. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Laughter

Public Works and Services is really aware of the needs of thermal communities, and so one of our priorities is really to work within those communities to try to supplement their usage of diesel. All of the small communities and the thermal communities, as well as market communities, will be considered within the Energy Plan that we're developing.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As Members may be aware, the Energy Plan just expired at the end of March 2016, so we're just taking part in this process. I'm presuming that we'll begin this process within this fiscal year and hoping to be finished by the end of the fiscal year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.