Frieda Martselos

Well, that's not my understanding, Madam Chair. I think that the housing corp has a kind of a lease back pay payment to the Government of the Northwest Territories for building these homes. And the cost of building each unit, whether it be a duplex or whatever, is much more than that. For $1 million revenue a year for the amount that has gone out, that is not a good business deal, Madam Chair. True or false?

Of the 2900 units, there's only 56 applicants, and most of them will be subject to a means test and all these other things and so that's not a very good rate of success. But, you know, I looked at that whole renewal initiative. It sounds great. But there's one important part that is missing from that renewal program, and that's the Seniors Aging with Dignity program. You know, we talk about this in the House. We talk about our seniors all the time. And that hasn't been addressed in the renewal initiative. And I'm going to be doing a statement on that tomorrow. But I just want to make sure that...

I just want to make sure that I don't lose time waiting for them to find the answer.

I also would like to know about the homeownership program. How many homeownership programs have gone to individuals in the entire NWT is my second question, Madam Chair.

Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell us if the Union of Northern Workers considers the parameters of these recruitment and retention bonuses to be fair for their NTHSSA members? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell us if she considers the recruitment and retention bonuses to be fairly distributed among healthcare staff? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, on October the 5th, 2022, the Government of the Northwest Territories and Union of Northern Workers signed an MOU providing a onetime labour market supplement in the form of a recruitment and retention bonus depending on eligibility requirements. According to the MOU, the labour market supplement will be applied as retention bonuses for some registered nurses, nurse practitioners, midwives, licensed practical nurses, and medical laboratory technologists. Eligible employees will receive between $5,000 and $7,000 depending on the NWT community they live in...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to question the Minister on the allocation of staff. You know, we have 107 positions and we have North Slave and Yellowknife that are in Yellowknife. So we have 65 staff. It's really misleading how the numbers come out because if you go to the table of active positions summary, so 65 staff are for the headquarters in North Slave and you know, when we're doing these, the mains, we should make sure that we make that very clear and we don't put them in with the regional offices. So you have 41 staff for the rest of the territories and there's 33 communities...

Madam Chair, when you do a business deal like this, you always look for profit. And we are no different, okay. The Government of the Northwest Territories settles for something that is less business oriented and goes with what the federal government and those specs for those houses were over the top. It's almost like building a you know, something that's going to happen within a war zone or something. That's how bad the specs were. There was no collaboration with the Government of the Northwest Territories on the specs, and the prices went up. I'm not blaming anybody that had to build them...

Mr. Speaker, if Indigenous governments, Indigenous organizations, or a majority of the NWT population rejects these two new policies mentioned, will the Finance Minister take that criticism seriously and amend these proposed policies to better reflect the will of the people of the NWT? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess maybe the Indigenous governments haven't read it yet. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell us if she is confident that the Dene, Inuit, and Metis people from the NWT will be supportive of the new Indigenous Employment Policy and the Employment Equity Policy? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.