Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department is actually, at this point, compiling a listing of all of the housing that we have available. Right now, we have no housing available for public housing. Just to let people know, the buildings that people see boarded up are scheduled for demolition, it’s expensive to do that, or else they are public houses owned by the community members, but we can provide a list of those houses that the corporation owns that are empty. Thank you.

The agreement with the federal government was to look at the housing for RCMP territory-wide. We are, however, willing to meet with the SCOSD committee to be able to review it and see if they would like changes to it.

 Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, actually. The NWT Housing Corporation is actually looking at all of our programs to see if we can make access to the programs easier, to assist in things such as land tenure. That's been an issue within the communities, so we are looking to see if we can take that out. As well, just to give notification that the NWT Housing Corporation will be sending out, in April, a survey to all of the LHOs, to all community workers, or to people that are using public housing to see what programs are working well and what we need to change, and then we will develop a plan going...

 At this point, yes, the Northern Pathways to Housing is putting in seniors' facilities into Behchoko, Fort Simpson, and Aklavik. Actually, Fort Providence is the next community on the table. I can't guarantee whether they will be able to put homeless shelters into every community, but we will be looking at putting a homeless shelter into every region. That would be the goal at this point. 

November 2016.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The selection for the seniors' facility was done in June 2013. We met the Fort McPherson Hamlet Council during their meeting to discuss the building and the location. In July 2013, we met with the Gwich'in Tribal Council and provided information on the building. In September 2013, we had a community consultation in the community. The location of the building was discussed at that point as well. December 2013 was the only time that we had an issue brought forward that talked about the location and we were asked if we could move it to the river. At that time, we looked at...

Absolutely. Yes, there have been discussions on aging in place. The GNWT is really supportive of our seniors and supportive of them living within their communities and within their homes and families as long as possible. That is a priority for us. We have talked many times about the incidence of seniors increasing, and so we will be developing a plan to be able to support aging in place as long as possible.

 On March 10th, I will be meeting with the federal housing Minister to talk about the social infrastructure money that may be coming to the Territories. Once the federal budget is defined, then we will be able to put forward cases to look at that issue. 

I am certain that it would be the goal of the GNWT to eradicate homelessness and to provide housing for every person in the Territories. However, would that goal be realistic would be the other problem to do. This will take time. It took a lot of time to get here. It's going to take a lot of time to fix. We are hoping that the federal government will follow through on its promise to invest in social infrastructure funding, though.

 Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To actually get an accurate count on homelessness is something that is a huge challenge, because you can just look at the shelters. You can get numbers from there. You can actually get numbers from the RCMP, but there is a whole population of hidden homelessness that is unmanageable or unrealistic to be able to count, and those include people that are youth, that are sleeping on couches, a lot of families sharing accommodations. Unless people identify as being homeless, then it's really hard to get those numbers. To get an accurate figure, I'm afraid that that would be...