EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
Is this Minister still committed and his staff still committed to ensuring that those additional responsibilities and authority and powers will be forthcoming and to the District Education Authorities if they request it and decide that they are ready?
Mr. Chairman, that process is part of the development of the new education act, what the legislative and what the executive powers are.
What are the regulations and responsibilities of the District Education Authorities and that will come through that public process that will begin as soon as the budget is complete and the legislative coordinator begins holding community hearings and consultations, and I think that the member is correct in the feeling that the members of this house and this Minister and the department and staff really believe in trying to enhance not only the accountability mechanisms but also fostering a better understanding and control at the local level through the locally elected District Education Authority.
I think you’ll see that as the process for the new education act moves forward.
Under the $100,000 on the original question under the Directorate last year for 2003-04, there was no actual expenditure under grants and contributions there.
It was only last year that it actually popped up into the budget we see.
I guess the decrease there is actually found throughout the budget.
There’s a huge increase in special needs for all of our communities in Nunavut and I think that’s really good news for schools.
I know there are a lot of principals last week when I was at the FNT Conference, wanted to know some of the details of this extra money going into the department and I think as we go out through this process, we will be able to devolve and talk about more of that information.
Anything else, Mr. Tootoo?
It leads to more questions I guess under policy and planning.
The other thing that we see here and I know that the Education Minister is also the Homeless Minister.
There’s $100,000 set aside for Homeless Secretariat contributions.
I am just wondering if the minister could explain exactly how those funds will be spent.
The Premier Paul Okalik, about four years ago, was the first jurisdiction in the country other than the federal government to appoint a minister responsible for the issue of homelessness when he appointed me.
At that time, and since then up until today, there has been no budget dollars associated with that position.
We had to do most of the logistics as well as the administrative work from the minister’s office itself and rely on different staff from the Housing Corporation and so on and so forth.
Last year, we were able to share half a PY from the position.
The money in the budget for the secretariat is to use as probably grant and contribution money, to help homeless groups and societies get started.
Right now, over the last several weeks, we have been working on an exciting initiative with Cape Dorset and it has gone through several different phases.
Cape Dorset is working on an issue of homelessness.
So I hope to be in position at some point to be able to support other communities in Nunavut with that.
Right now, the only actual homeless shelter in Nunavut is funded by such as here in Iqaluit.
However, other communities have come forward to look at opportunities under the homelessness initiatives that the federal government has already announced to start looking at dealing with people who are homeless, whether they are absolute or relative.
So that’s the reason why the money is there and the money would be used as grants and contributions under the same policies and procedures that would be in place for all the monies issued by the government.
It’s here in this budget, in the education budget because I am the Minister of Education and the money follows me.
So in this case, it’s the first time there was any money following me, not like in health where all of the money would leave me.
In education, there’s some money following me.
So that’s why the $100,000 was set up under this budget.
I wonder if the minister can tell us what this money here, now he has got money following him around and growing and so the issue of homelessness.
I know that it’s an ongoing issue here in Iqaluit.
I am just wondering if you could say, like what’s the secretariat?
Is it going to be just who’s office?
Who’s going to be administering these funds?
Who does someone apply to, to be able to access that funding?
Does it go to the Deputy Minister of Education or who in the Department of Education or the minister’s office do letters or applications or request for information on applications go to?
Mr. Chairman, as I said earlier, in the past four years, this is the first time there’s ever been any allocation of any specific fund for homelessness.
In the past, what I have been working at is working with our federal friends, the Honorable Brian Shaw who came here twice I believe and met with me.
We were able to access skippy funds under the Federal Homelessness Initiative.
We were able to actually fund the youth cottage program that is actually going forward now.
It had to be done by NGO’s.
I had no specific allocation of funds under the Government of Nunavut to provide matching contributions for example, or to access third party funds where possible and so on.
So there were some issues there.
The same policies and procedures for grants and contributions for any other program under the government would apply for this 100 thousand dollars.
The request would be made through the Minister’s office and those requests would be then dispersed based on what the contingencies are at that point in time.
The minister raises another interesting point.
He talks about the youth cottage and the non-government organizations that run it.
I understand that it’s also, or my understanding is that it’s the same non-government organization that’s running the homeless shelter here in Iqaluit.
My question for the minister, given the February 4 ad that was in Nunatsiaq News, or in the news paper for a homeless shelter, a request, an expression of interest to run the homeless shelter in Iqaluit, is that now indicating that the government’s going to be taking over that responsibility from which ever non-government organization is running those programs right now and respond to that as well?
The Illitiit Society operates the youth cottage and operates the homeless shelter on behalf and for government.
The Illitiit Society, the genesis of the Illitiit Society was formed at the community wellness conference in Iqaluit and basically the fact though I’ve been running the coda homeless shelter.
The new project that they’re running is the youth cottage, and that comes from what we just talked about earlier, the Skippy Fund.
It has been accessed by the City of Iqaluit because it can’t come through the Government of Nunavut.
That’s where they received the bulk of their funding for the youth cottage program.
The request for interest and it wasn’t a request for proposal, just as the member said; it’s an expression of interest to see if there is interest out there to run the shelter.
What happens from time to time with government, the government looks at proposal calls for different agencies that run contracts.
There is no necessarily thing that says you’re going to run the program for the rest of what ever the government does.
Five years have passed.
The Illitiit Society has been running the homeless shelter program.
We decided to go out and to see if there is any other interest in any other group to run the program.
The Illitiit Society could apply and say no, we’d like to be able to run the program again.
So, we haven’t gone to an RFP or tender or anything like that.
All we did in the paper was to see if there was any other group out there interested in running the homeless shelter.
I met with Mr. Bill Riddell, the chair of the homeless shelter group in December before the ad was placed, and told him that I was looking at bringing this forward.
Again, it’s just a way, in due course, of doing business.
If you just continue to roll over a contract to one group because you like the way they’re doing it, or you just roll over because they’ve been doing it anyway, so, we just did an expression of interest.
Mr. Tootoo: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to ask the minister if he could indicate if, he already said that there was no money following him around before.
This the first time that there is money following him around, now, he says they had a contract with this group to run the home.
Maybe, he could clarify if it wasn’t under the homeless portfolio, where the money comes from for running the homeless shelter here in Iqaluit.
Chairman: Go ahead, Mr. Minister.
The homeless shelter here in Iqaluit receives its funding from different sources, different pots from the Government of Nunavut, for example, a contribution of $25,000 from the Housing Association.
The bulk of the money that goes to the homeless shelter comes from the Department of Health and Social Services.
It’s a little over $100,000 and they have to sign a contribution agreement for that and they use that to run the program.
The $100,000 that I’m talking about here is actually now logistical and administrative money set up under the Homeless Secretariat, so if you were in Cambridge Bay and you said you needed $15,000 to do up a study, or a project or a proposal to get homeless money from the federal government, then there would be actually money now to be able to do that, like the work that we’re doing right now with Cape Dorset.
We’re providing logistic and administrative and letters of support to them.
They have not come forward for example, the Cape Dorset group asking for financial contributions.
If they did, I have no money to give them because there is no program, and there is no budget set up for that.
The money that runs the homeless shelter right now, it just comes straight out of the Department of Health and Social Services because it was there prior to division, it’s been there since division and that’s where that money comes from.
You had your hand up, Mr. Tootoo.
If that’s the case then I guess I’m wondering why the Minister of Education is putting out an expression of interest for a contract that is put out by the Department of Health and Social Services.
It seems odd that the Minister just indicated that all the majority of the funding comes through a contribution agreement with the Department of Health and Social Services that it’s not the Department of Health and Social Services that is looking for an expression of interest, then not the Minister of Education.
There is a pretty simple answer to that.
And it is that the Minister for Homelessness was the Minister for Health and it just happened when the Minister, Premier Okalik appointed me as Minister of Homelessness, that all the funding at that time for homelessness, for example, to run that shelter, there was only one shelter, came from one department.
Now, the case has changed.
Now, the Minister of Health has become the Minister of Education and I’m still the Minister for Homelessness.
The contribution agreement with health is still in place.
The Illitiit Society still has to bring its financial records up to date and so on.
There are some logistic issues there.
Then they would get an agreement from the Department of Health.
As the Minister responsible for Homelessness, it is my position, and opportunity to issue the requests for an expression of interest in looking at running the homeless shelter, so that’s what we’ve done.
So, maybe the confusion comes from the previous portfolio that I held.
But right now, those monies to operate the shelter are still in the Department of Health’s budget.
The extra here, the $100,000 is the first time there has actually been any money allocated for homelessness itself through other groups, agencies, Cambridge Bay, Whale Cove, could actually come to the Minister and say this is what we’re trying to do.
I would hope that we would be able to leverage some of those dollars.
Before that wasn’t the case.
Mr. Tootoo, go ahead.
Mr. Chairman, the Minister indicated that the funding for the shelter in town here comes from a number of different sources.
It’s my understanding that the federal dollars and the dollars from other areas that they receive funding from Uqsuq gave them $10,000 not very long ago.
I know that there’s always been ongoing support for the shelter.
There was a time when they painted the building.
There were a lot of volunteers from the community that wanted to help out a local non-profit organization in running that program.
They applied for funding from different levels of government and different areas within each level of government.
I’m wondering is if the Minister has put out this expression of interest, has he received or discussed and received consent or the okay from the organization that’s running the centre right now because the department or the government is not running that shelter.
It’s the Illitiit that’s running the shelter.
The government is just one spoke, if you want to call it that of source of funding for that organization.
So, I’m just wondering if the Minister sought and got the approval of the Board of Directors for Illitiit that run the shelter for putting this expression of interest out there.
Does he even think that it’s necessary?
First of all, the expression of interest, as I said earlier, there is no hard and fast rule.
If there is anyone who is running a program for the government continues to run it.
There are obligations whether they are administrative or financial that has to be met.
It could be dealing with financial contributions, agreements, signed papers and so on.
In this case, Mr. Chairman, since 1999 and before the Illitiit Society were running the homeless shelter. we thought, me as Minister though there is an opportunity to look at an expression of interest to see if there is any other group on the ground that would look at running the homeless shelter for the government.
The building that they occupy is a government asset.
The core funding that they receive came from the government and they are providing a service to the government.
If the facility closed down tomorrow, and everyone was on the street, they would come right to the government and say why.
So there is that responsibility and issue on behalf of the Government of Nunavut.
We’ve put out an expression of interest, not an RFP, it’s not a tender call, to see if there are other groups actually on the ground.
There have been other groups on the ground in the past that’ve come forward, Inuit organizations and so on who have said that they were interested in running the shelter.
So, we did the request for interest. I will see where it goes from there.
I met with Mr. Riddell in December after bringing forward all the groups in the community in November.
We had a meeting.
I discussed with Mr. Riddell at that time and we’ve moved forward.
The Illitiit Society continue to run the shelter and they may well do that next year but the government has an opportunity to put out an interest to see if there are any other groups interested.
So, that’s what we’ve done.
We’ve exercised that option.
We haven’t broken any rules or what have you.
Just one thing then, if the Illitiit Society decided they didn’t want to do it anymore and walked away from it, is it something that the government would then take over to ensure it’s operations and make sure that the door stayed open so that, unfortunately, that over-crowded homeless shelter would stay open for those people that don’t have a place to go?
Is the Minister saying then that based on this and it’s his responsibility that, if that was the case, if that did happen, no matter what, if there was no other non-profit organization out there willing to try and go all over the different pots of federal and territorial governments to try and find money to just keep the doors open, that this government would have that responsibility?
This is similar to other things that have occurred in the community.
I will just use Iqaluit as an example because the member is familiar with it.
Akausiqsarvik was the mental health institution that was set up.
We had an agreement and a tender call and an invite proposal and so on and the Elder’s Society of Iqaluit won that.
They were operating the facility and they decided they didn’t want to run it any more.
The government actually had to take that over.
Since the early 1990s, the Baffin Regional Agvik Society has run the women’s shelter here in the community.
They run it as an independent non-profit society.
If they decided tomorrow that they didn’t want to run it or if there was issues around financial contributions or other issues that the government had to step in, then we would still provide that service.
That’s what I’m saying.
In the case of the shelter, it’s run by a non-profit organization or society.
All we’ve suggested was if there are some issues there is there an opportunity.
We looked at doing a request for interest to see if there are other groups who would like to run that shelter.
We’ve done the expression of interest.
I informed Mr. Riddell in December that we would be doing that and so we’re moving forward from that point.
The Illitiit Society has run this program for X number of years as a volunteer board and agency and have done the yeoman service in doing that.
We’ve just done a request for interest.
It’s not a tender.
We haven’t awarded a contract.
It’s not a request for a proposal.
It was just an expression of interest.
That’s all that was done.
We’ll go on from that point, where we are right now.
I don’t think there is any mystery or anything there.
We will turn to Mr. Peterson until when he’s done you can go back then.
Well, this discussion on homelessness in Nunavut is very interesting.
I’m wondering if the Minister can provide us with a definition of what a homeless person is in Nunavut?
There are two definitions of homelessness found not just in Nunavut but throughout the world.
One is absolute and the other relative.
Absolute homelessness is what we see for example in urban Canada where someone would be on the street with a little tin cup.
That is absolute homelessness.
And that’s the terminology used by social scientists and so on, who talk about the issue of homelessness.
The second type of homelessness is the type of homelessness we see more commonly in Nunavut and that is relative homelessness.
Relative being when you have 15 people living in a three bedroom house.
That is the type of homelessness we see in Nunavut and that’s the two definitions that I use as the Minister of Homelessness for Nunavut but so do other jurisdictions; absolute and relative.
I would like to thank the Minister for that answer.
Does the Minister for Homelessness collect statistics on homeless in Nunavut?
Are there some numbers out there that are available for us to review?
The Minister responsible for the issue of homelessness doesn’t take numbers and everything.
That is done through the Nunavut Housing Corporation.
The housing corporation along with Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated has done the yeoman service of putting together a package to our federal partner which illustrates and documents some of the issues around relative homelessness in Nunavut.
I was wondering then, if the Minister responsible for the issue of homelessness is not really responsible for the homeless, then why isn’t the Secretariat under the Nunavut Housing Corporation if we have relative homelessness in Nunavut.
The Minister for Homelessness is not the Minister for Housing.
If the Minister for the Homeless was the Minister for Housing then it would have been in that budget.
The Minister for Homeless is now the Minister of Education, among other portfolios and therefore and thus, that $100,000 in the budget for education because that’s where I’m the key minister for.
It wouldn’t be acceptable if the money for the grants and contributions that we talked about, if I were still the Minister for Economic Development, I was the Minister of Health, it wouldn’t be acceptable where I would phone up the deputy minister from Health and say give me $40,000, there’s $30.000 on an application with this issue where I’m not the minister.
It’s very difficult for a minister to share a deputy minister.
So, if you’ve got two ministers sharing a deputy minister, there could be some issues there and we didn’t want to get into that type of issue.
For clarification purposes and for transparency, the 100 thousand that has been proposed in the budget for the first time ever to facilitate a homeless secretariat, has been lodged within the Department of Education because the minister responsible for Homelessness is also responsible for that portfolio.
We saw that as probably the clearest, transparent way of bringing forth that process.
I’m not sure if I am sure of what you said.
I like the concept of a homeless secretariat because I was reading your presentation earlier to provide an organized forum in which all levels of government and I take it the three levels of government, the federal, territorial and municipal are all involved.
I like partnerships like that.
They should all be involved because homelessness is an issue that affects the whole community.
I hear a lot about homelessness in Iqaluit.
You said absolute homelessness is something that goes on down south.
I’ve seen it in Toronto and Vancouver, those are two cities that really have a lot of absolute homelessness, but I see people in Iqaluit who seem to be on the verge of that absolute homelessness, as opposed to Cambridge Bay where we have relative homelessness where people will take in relatives because there is a housing shortage.
They’re not really homeless, but it’s because they don’t have their own house or apartment.
I wonder if we’re comparing apples and oranges, Iqaluit and Cambridge Bay for example.
I’m not sure what Hunter said, but is it really a big issue in Nunavut.
Is it a bigger issue in Iqaluit, the homelessness issue?
Well, Mr. Peterson just hit the nail on the head because this is the issue that I have to deal with when I’m the Minister of Homelessness and everyone in this house deals with it.
When we talk to our federal partner, they look at it differently. They say there is no urban homelessness there.
If you had absolute homelessness in Nunavut, if you didn’t have a place to go, you would freeze to death.
So, that’s the reason why we don’t have people hanging around with tin cups and hanging around the Northern Store or Co-op somewhere, because you couldn’t sleep outside, because most of our people would freeze to death.
That’s why we say our issue is absolute but in terminology terms, it would be relative because we actually put them up places.
There are a lot of people in Nunavut, for example, you see it here Iqaluit, let’s say someone is at the BCC, they don’t want to go home because of what ever issue, so they hang around Iqaluit.
Then they want to stay at their neighbour’s house or their friend’s house and so on.
In some cases, they end up at the homeless shelter because no one wants to put them up.
That’s homelessness.
They can’t hang around Arctic Ventures because they would freeze.
So, you see more of it in Iqaluit because there are more people here.
The population of Iqaluit right now is getting closer to 7 thousand people.
The numbers itself will show that.
In Rankin Inlet and some of the other communities, including Cambridge Bay, we’ve heard cases now of people in similar situations, where there is actually absolute homelessness, except you can’t just hang around Cambridge because you would freeze, so you stay in someone’s house.
Some people sleep in cold porches and so on.
Sometimes you don’t have any place to stay and people have actually paid the person to get out of the community to go to Yellowknife or they go to Winnipeg.
We’ve seen cases of that.
So, the issue of homelessness is real in Nunavut, not just in Iqaluit.
That’s why I can tell you right now, and I said it earlier, that Cape Dorset is really putting together a good plan there with some people that we’ve been working on and it deals with the issue of homelessness.
So, it’s not just in Iqaluit, it’s across Nunavut.
But, the reality is that when you’re dealing with 12 to 13 people in one house, people are homeless.