Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First off I’d like to join you in recognizing Hunter Tootoo. He’s been a good friend over the years that I’ve gotten to know, and as well, he’s flanked by two women amazingly time has stopped for, Christy Sinclair and Wanda Norwegian. I’ve known them a long time and they look as young as ever. I don’t know how I keep getting older. It’s the truth, though; that’s the problem. Same as Mr. Ramsay there, I too wish to recognize Sean Ivens. He’s a very well-known businessman. We grew up together in Fort Simpson. He spent many years in Hay River and certainly in Yellowknife...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Frankly, I just can’t figure out how the Minister is proud of the job he’s doing and how he keeps saying we are doing a good job when he only builds one house per community per year on average. Those statistics speak for themselves. We’ll let Northerners judge the Minister, Mr. Speaker.

In summary, 19 percent of the houses in the Northwest Territories are in core need; 31.6 percent are houses with problems of some sort. Declining funding is a terrible thing, but it is a terrible crutch to lean on that as, oh my goodness, the funding has been drying up. We have seen...

I appreciate the answer from the Minister. So, we are talking approximately, if I got his numbers correctly as I wrote them down, we are talking about 38 new houses in the Northwest Territories that will change the market in a positive way for Northerners. It doesn’t matter if you live in Yellowknife, you have affordability issues, you have suitability issues here; it doesn’t matter if you live in Paulatuk, the issues are the same. People are struggling for good options.

How does the Minister justify, on average, slightly more than one new house per community in the Northwest Territories as...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to make mention of several Yellowknife Centre constituents. I’ll start on the end with the NWT Status of Women. We have Annemieke Mulders, Lorraine Phaneuf and I believe Samantha Thomas also lives downtown. She’s shaking her head, but I’ll take her anyway. Sitting next to them is the lovely Ms. Katherine Robinson. She’s devoted many great years of service here at the Premier’s office and to help many Members here, and she’s done a wonderful job. So, thank you very much for each and every one. Thank you.

The Minister is actually getting ahead of me on the next question, which talks about a community may not get any infrastructure whatsoever for many years to come. When he says their fair share of infrastructure, that only might mean one or two houses new to that community. It is a positive effect. Also, to be fair to the Minister, very quickly, he said that we are doing a little better than one per community. He’s right; we’re doing 1.15 house per community across the Northwest Territories. That is 38 houses in 33 communities. Let’s give him the credit he deserves by all means, by saying he is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We could talk about problems with housing and who it affects until the cows come home, as they say, but we clearly know it affects seniors, new families. It affects large and small communities in different ways, but equally in the sense of it’s a problem.

Mr. Speaker, we could talk about suitability of houses and certainly core needs. We can also talk about the vitality of the community being destroyed as the population leaves without housing options. I’ve cited lots of examples out there, so let’s start with one of the most important questions on this particular issue....

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to use my Member’s statement to talk about the facts, so here they are: In 2009 the NWT Community Housing Survey said that 19 percent of Northerners are in core need of housing. What matters little more than your health and your family than housing? Everything starts at home. While we continue to talk about revitalizing our declining population here in the Northwest Territories, we have communities suffering the negative effects of population leaving. But where do we start? Well, if there are no places to access housing, be it in Yellowknife, be it Paulatuk...

Thank you. Although actual employment rates are trending downwards, we’re going south, as I said, literally and figuratively. We’ve noticed that the federal government has slashed the EI program, which is going to now fall onto the territorial government to pick up the slack. As I said earlier today and I’ll just make one more point, which is the Yellowknife rate of unemployment is closer to 3.4 percent, and of course, as we all know here, the community unemployment rate is closer to 30 percent, if you’re lucky to be that low.

The reality here is, and my next question leads into, if the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I talked about concerns with employment rates, so I have questions for the Minister responsible for employment. In this particular case, that would be Mr. Lafferty.

Could Mr. Lafferty provide some examples of true unemployment figures in several of our communities, and I’ll allow him to pick his own examples of what the true unemployment figures are in some of our northern communities, please.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll gladly take any one of those commitments, all or some or who knows what I’ll get, but I’ll certainly welcome every single one of them. Since, as I highlighted, the changes to the EI program, it now makes it more challenging for our northern workforce to find consistent, meaningful employment options. We’re now talking that you have to find well over five months of actual work to qualify for EI. Now, in a robust, working economy, not a problem. I accept any changes. But what is the department prepared for in this new shift where they’ve extended the hours one must...