Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate we should be working with our communities to find other sources. Get money from the feds is the slogan around here. I want to confirm: if it's approximately 40, and it's going to be approximately 35, and we know that the gap actually increases with inflation, and it increases with devaluing of assets, are we going to be spending more than $5 million in the life of this Assembly to reduce the municipal funding gap?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My colleague for Hay River seems to be getting some good answers there, and I believe the Minister of Finance has kindly agreed to take questions on behalf of ITI and Infrastructure. My question is: can we remove Wal-Mart from the Business Incentive Program?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can someone tell me what the municipal funding gap currently is?

I don't often like to refer to the Yukon as doing things better than us, but I can tell you what a proper agricultural land system looks like. In the Yukon, if you live on a piece of land for seven years, they give it to you for free in fee simple. It's not a lease; you get to own that land if you're willing to put it to agricultural use. Now, I think this is, perhaps, too much to ask the Department of Lands to look at something like that, but when we are looking at agricultural leases, can we look at the pricing and make this as cheap as possible for those willing to start agricultural...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I previously asked questions to the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs regarding a Yellowknife city charter. I was hoping that the Minister responsible could outline a process and provide that document to the City of Yellowknife on what a path forward for a Yellowknife city charter could look like.

I appreciate that answer. The importance here is that carbon offset pools are increasingly becoming a more and more common, larger pool of money to tap into. The federal government is looking at setting up a credit scheme nation-wide, and I don't want the Northwest Territories to be left behind. One of my concerns with this is that it's not really built into our energy strategy or our climate change strategy, so I want to make sure that we look into this properly. Can the Minister work with her counterparts in Infrastructure and ENR and make sure there are some clearer points of accountability...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, I would like to speak about carbon offsets. Firstly, a carbon offset is a credit for greenhouse gas reductions achieved by one party, that can be purchased and used to compensate the emissions of another party. Mr. Speaker, there are a variety of carbon-offset schemes, and some have proved to work better than others. Today, Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak about not just simply buying carbon offsets but the possibility of selling them and using what is an increasingly larger and larger market with billions of dollars to access and fund projects in the North.

The...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a single question in regard to the Transitional Rent Supplement Program. Firstly, I recognize that this wasn't subscribed before, but previous Minister said that it was largely due to lack of advertising. I think when we have to constantly ask the Housing Corporation to put their policies on a website, let alone make an application available online, it's understandable that programs aren't subscribed to. My issue with this line item is that it is actually not correct because this program is sunsetting this fiscal and then we are going to have the Canada Housing...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I look forward to further discussions on this. I've spoken with a number of Indigenous governments who, if the Housing Corporation and the local housing authorities would simply be transferred over to them, and the funding and the units, they would gladly take that on and they would go to CMHC and get better funding than us. I'll continue to talk about this.

I wanted to speak a bit about the cap on units. I know the Minister doesn't like thinking of it as a cap, but that is simply what it is. I've heard a number of numbers; 2,400 units is what I understood are public...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess one of my concerns with the local housing authorities is that in many communities you have the housing authorities, you have the Indigenous government, you have the municipal government; we essentially have three or four voices who you could define as the community. I know we're developing a number of community housing plans, I'm supportive of those. I think the first one we've seen is definitely a step in the right direction. In part of those community housing plans would the Minister be looking at changing governance models? I think there is potential here to...