Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister may have answered my question there but I'll tell you 200 grand for those eight camps was a great deal, and I know many people are running these not necessarily with government support, that they're communitydriven initiatives. But I've talked to some of the organizers and they'd really like to, you know, take these to another level, perhaps fly in elders, fly in people to help support, you know, turn them into bit of kind of an educational aspect as well. And I just would ask the Minister that perhaps the department, you know, with this fund, reach out to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to commend the department on their work to date working with ECE to get the hunter ed program in the schools. I know we're piloting it in nine schools. I also know there's been some work through Bush Kids and other initiatives to have kind of traditional knowledge in schools. But I would really like to have the Minister work with his ECE colleague to get hide camps into schools. Is this something the Minister could look into doing? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The official flower of the NWT is the mountain aven. The official bird is the gyrfalcon. But I suggest that we add an official smell, Mr. Speaker, and that official smell would be the smell of a traditionally tanned moose hide. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the Minister today for his statement on supporting sustainable livelihoods, and I would like to thank the work ENR is doing to support traditional moose hide tanning. I would like to see more of this.

Mr. Speaker, I have had the privilege of helping many people prepare their hides and attending numerous hide...

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I would like to thank the Premier for that answer. I think that that's great. I think it's great to have a senior person leading, you know, what is a very important renewal, and I look forward to the results of that.

I guess I have some questions a bit about where we think this renewal is going. I know we got the new statement and vision today. And I think the way I would frame the longstanding tension in the Housing Corporation is whether it is a social envelope department or whether it should be a corporation that is solely focused on assets and infrastructure. And...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, another kind of anomaly is they all somewhat have different appointment mechanisms. Yellowknife specifically, the mayor and a group of Yellowknife MLAs get together and we decide who is on the Yellowknife Housing Authority. Others are directly appointed by the Minister. Some have a bit more community input. This is according to some ministerial directive out of the 90s, I believe. But I really don't think it's my role to decide who's on the Yellowknife Housing Authority, and in fact, I would like them to be at arm's length nonprofit that perhaps some sort of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I guess so there's kind of this weird thing going on where there's local housing organizations and then there's authorities and some, in fact, are nonprofits registered under the Society's Act, and I'll note that those ones actually can't be investigated by the ombud, which is a weird kind of mistake that was made in that schedule.

But is there any actual reason for this difference between some of them being nonprofits and some being, you know, essentially creatures of statute under the act? Is this something we're going to correct, or is there actually a reason for...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks, committee, for indulging me. I just had one more question. I know ENR is at the technical working group on at least one piece of legislation. I'm just wondering if we provide Indigenous governments money to support their work being there, and if so, how much, or whether that's an EIA question. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I recognize that MVRMA is both federal legislation and led by EIA but I'm just I think we are long overdue for a regulatory system overhaul and a big part of that is waters and EPA and obviously MVRMA. But does the Minister have any update on when the MVRMA work will be complete so we could then continue to finish the EPA and waters work? Thank you.

Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.

Everyone has acknowledged that there is a municipal infrastructure gap, however, the most recent numbers on the size of that gap which provide a community breakdown versus the formula that are publicly available are from 2014. My question therefore is, can the Minister provide an updated analysis of the municipal infrastructure gap and the year it was completed based on:

What is the current municipal infrastructure gap by community;

What is the current municipal infrastructure gap by community as it relates to...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate the Minister having that conversation because, as I've mentioned many times, there's about $20 million in office space leasing that the GNWT has. There's another 700 or so units that income assistance essentially pays the lease for people. And then there's the other $3 million that the Housing Corp then leases. And I'm wondering if the Housing Corp has ever looked into offering a longterm lease to either a nonprofit or a dev corp so that they could use that money to probably leverage some more federal funding or, you know, leverage a mortgage or go build...