Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I'd like to ask some questions of the housing Minister. I know we're all concerned about safety and security in our communities, and I know there's a lot of concerns too about safety and security around public housing units and within those units of the people that live there. And so we see in the Housing NWT business plan that one of the things to try to address safety and security related to public housing specifically is something called safe growth training and a safe growth program.
I wonder if the Minister can actually explain what that safe growth training and program actually involves and how it would enhance security either for residents in public housing or anyone else in the community. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Yellowknife North. Minister of Housing NWT.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Member for the question. Safe growth training is going to be instrumental in this territory over the next number of years. We've begun with three communities and three communities that are facing a lot of illegal activities within their community. So we pulled in safe growth to work with our LHOs as partners within the community with the RCMP, with the local housing organization, with the municipality, with Housing NWT and the district office, to work together on identifying issues within that community and how we can prevent that or how we can look at things in advance so the community is not faced with a lot of the issues that are currently faced with today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I wonder if the Minister can explain, does this have to do with just, like, changing protocols or behaviour, or are we changing physical structures or arrangements? Is this, like -- is this an infrastructure changing program or just sort of sitting people down and changing policies and protocols? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, right now our local housing organizations are faced with a lot of violence within housing, and these are staff that are not necessarily trained with crime and crime prevention but they're facing it every day in our communities. And it's a really tough situation, especially for our local housing organization staff. In terms of safe growth, it's more about policy and protocol, what to do next in certain situations, how do you work with partners like the RCMP or the sheriff or the rental office or the local housing organization. But we are also expanding how we look at our future designs for housing. What are we looking at in terms of infrastructure builds and how do we prevent -- like crime for example, what are we building and how are we building apartment blocks for crime prevention and environmental design. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So which communities have these trainings or this environmental design work -- which communities has it been completed in already and will it be expanded to more or even all of the communities in the NWT? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, what we've begun with is we found that Hay River is hit with a lot of illegal activities. Considering the situation, the geographical location and the highway system, Hay River is hit with a lot of legal activities. We see a lot of illegal activities within our public housing. So we began with Hay River. We've reached out to Fort Smith to begin the work there. Again, a highway system. We're having discussions with another community. We haven't finalized that community yet, Mr. Speaker. We were thinking perhaps Fort Resolution. We have to do more discussions with local chief and council to see if they'd be up to having those conversations about safe growth within their community. But I think the work with safe growth is going to be instrumental in how we think about housing and how we think about community, especially around illegal activities and just making sure that the local housing organization staff and also the district office understand that policies and protocols are in place to keep them safe, to keep the tenants safe within the units, but also to keep the community safe. And that's why the crime prevention for environmental design, looking at the Hay River build, the 30-unit build, how we're building that. Instead of having hallways, you know, inside the building, we're looking at exterior access. So that's really important to have as part of our crime prevention for environmental design. I think of, like, when we look at parks around housing units, to make sure that they're properly lit. That exits -- when I first went into Bigelow, my experience here in Yellowknife with Bigelow, I was really struck by a lot of the hidden entrances and exits. So housing is looking at that as part of our territorial expansion with infrastructure build, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister responsible for Housing NWT. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife Centre.
