Upon re-election, what do you plan to accomplish in your first 90 days, what about a year?
I mean, that’s about setting the priorities and getting to know my colleagues and such so that we can choose who will be on the cabinet.
There’ll be a lot that will be taken care of in that. I’ve learned a lot from what happened, with the last priority setting and I definitely have some ideas about how I would want to see that changed and, really narrowed down a lot more realistic.
I know where I would like things to go, in that regard, but I think the first 90 days really are about, building those relationships, learning about each other, getting our priorities together as a government, and picking the cabinet.
Then it’s seeing what we can do with our first mains estimates, which, generally are not going to change too much given a new government, that’s why I hope myself and others that are there now will come back so that we can have some of that continuity and not have to sort of start all over again.
What are the most pressing issues you plan to address during your time in office?
My number one issue really, and I’m sure it’s everybody else’s as well, is housing.
I say that and then it makes me think of everything else that I think is super important to housing and then, the addictions piece, the mental health piece.
I say that larger than just in the respect of the vulnerable populations and such. I mean, everybody’s mental health, and physical health to with our health care system. I think really people just need to feel that they are being focused on and that they’re the center of the system and not just trying to navigate it poorly.
I guess that gives me three things there. Healthcare, housing, and addiction.
What is your plan to bring workers to the north, and keep residents in the NWT?
I think that generally, we are underutilizing a lot of our immigrants. I think we really need to get the immigration program under control. I know that I was approached by businesses during, at the start of the Ukrainian war to bring refugees and people that had certain skill sets that really were not able to be found here, but that process of having to look for people here first was really slowing things up and such.
I think we really need to look at immigration. That’s a huge one, but really, I think the key issue is until we start investing properly in our Indigenous people and having them take these roles on and be in charge of our territory, we won’t go anywhere. So to me, I think that would be a huge priority to increase how many employees we have and people working is to really invest in the small communities and the education for them.
The schools are appalling in the small communities. I’m not a building engineer, but I can look at that and see that that’s just wrong.
As housing prices continue to rise, do you have plans to address the needs of those struggling to live in the north?
I do think that we need to be increasing the amounts that we’re giving for income assistance right now. I’ve become really aware, particularly people with disabilities, are having to live off of under 900 a month, and that includes all their food bills, phone, internet, everything, and hearing from people that are skipping meals and such when their focus should be on their health, so I would like to see an increase to income assistance.
I’m actually coming around to universal basic income when I look at how much money is spent on just administrating and making people without the capacity to do so jump through these hoops every month.
So I think that’s an area there where we could be really helping. I would look to probably increase the cost of living offset that the government has made due to the carbon tax issue. I think every person could use that and I would also probably bump that for any household that only has one income.
So like for myself, and I’m not doing this just for myself, but as a single person household we don’t have other people in the house to offset or to get another COLO payment it’s called. So, if you have a household with a nuclear family, you’ve got two incomes, so there’s two COLOs for the adult.
Then you’ve got three children are getting one as well, so they’re significantly offset to heat a house that could potentially be the same size as my house to heat, as a single person. I think there needs to be a little bit of something around that looked at.
Maybe it’s not necessarily giving people like myself an increase, but having a place where someone who is struggling can apply. Kind of like they have those one time sort of heat, emergency subsidies for the seniors, that’s the heating fuel.
There needs to be some areas of support. We need to be streamlining everything. I think for me that’s a huge one. I hear stories about if you’re gonna apply for a disability support, you have to every single time be in, you know, submitting the same types of forms and the same proof of disability.
Whereas, if the government had a better sort of database on all of this, then they would just be able to look and be like, okay, that’s for the different agencies.
I know there’s privacy issues there too, but… We’re so small that I think our government is getting really bogged down in legality and risk aversion, and it’s just, it’s to the detriment of the people, which we’re still liable for their health and well being, and that piece isn’t being played out the way it should. It’s all done in sort of this risk matrix.
Another thing I think really needs to happen in the next bit, first of all, is the northern treatment as well. I’m not saying we don’t still send people south, but we need the aftercare, we need all of that, so that’s going to be a huge part of what I’m pushing for priorities too.
Due to the rise in drug crime and homelessness in the territory and its communities, can you describe the number one crime-related issue you plan on addressing first?
When you look at all like petty crime and property crime and all that, it really does all come down to drugs. People are committing these crimes in order to get money in order to get their fix. So I guess drug crime, but I don’t agree with treating it like a crime in that sense.
I think we need to really start cracking down on the suppliers in the communities, the known drug dealers, the known drug houses. Somebody’s got to be bringing these in at a bigger scale, so getting some investigations done on who really is bringing the drugs to the North.
I think that has to all be done and led by the Indigenous governments with support from the GNWT, not the other way around. I believe right now our treatment and such is all based on fiscal drivers, when they decide where to send somebody in the south, they’re making those decisions not in the best interest of the patient, but what is in the best interest of HSSS or whatever.
So for example, we’ll only send opioid patients over to Edgewood on the island because it’s $40,000, so only the most critical cases get to go there, yet it’s one of the ones that’s been proven to work better.
We definitely need to have supports, in each community for aftercare, and I think that’s a huge one too.
I think that, until we get that under control, this addictions piece, and then properly supporting the shelters.
I’m really worried about these shelter RFPs that go out. The amount of money that’s being told will be provided is nowhere near what is needed and what NGO is going to take on a project and bid on a project when they know they’re going to have to go around and find more money for it, when there’s other things they could bid on that they’re going to get 100 percent funded.
I know there’s been changes over at the Salvation Army and I’m looking forward to getting to know the new chaplain better.
I think maybe an NGO, sort of like a working group would be a good way to go. Having more of this conversation with all the people that are working with them, the departments, the NGOs then freeing up land, because I do know of NGOs and groups and churches that want to build social housing, but they just can’t get land and
If you’re a charitable organization, it’s very hard to finance the purchase of land, but they have all of the other stuff ready to go, they just can’t get a place for it. I think that would be another area that I think that as an MLA I could push to open up land and 1 parcels of land, to NGOs that want to build, sustainable social housing.
