Thank you, Mr. Chair. As mentioned, my name is Rebecca Alty. I'm the vice-president of the NWT Association of Communities, and I'm joined today by Sara Brown who is the CEO for the NWT Association of Communities. We're here on behalf of the 33 communities in the Northwest Territories.
Unfortunately, we did not have the opportunity to translate our documents, because we received the invitation to appear only on Monday. However, if you ask questions in French, we will be able to answer them.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to come and speak today and for the opportunity back in August to provide a written submission. Today we'll provide a bit more information on our written submission and take this opportunity to answer any questions you might have.
First, on infrastructure funding, I want to highlight how much we appreciate gas tax funding, particularly last year with the doubling of the gas tax. We're the front-line government. We're there providing clean drinking water, proper treatment of sewage and proper disposal of garbage, as well as providing community recreation, ensuring that Canadians can remain healthy all year long. With the gas tax, we are able to ensure that we are meeting our community priorities and keeping residents healthy, and really making sure that those assets stay up to date.
Housing is in a dire state in the Northwest Territories. In Yellowknife, in our 2018 point-in-time counts, 338 people were experiencing homelessness. We're talking about the north. It's -42° today in Yellowknife and we have 338 people who are homeless.
In 2019, the NWT Bureau of Statistics calculated that 43% of housing in the Northwest Territories has at least one housing problem. A housing problem is affordability, adequacy or suitability, and the proportion of dwellings with at least one housing problem ranged from 30% in Sachs Harbour, which is up in the Arctic Ocean, to 90% of houses in Colville Lake. Therefore, a long-term federal funding commitment on housing is much needed in the Northwest Territories.
In regard to truth and reconciliation, it will be five years this June since the commission released its report. I would like to draw attention to TRC's call to action number 21, which calls upon the federal government:
to provide sustainable funding for existing and new Aboriginal healing centres to address the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual harms caused by residential schools, and to ensure that the funding of healing centres in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories is a priority.
In the upcoming federal budget, we do hope this recommendation is actioned.
With regard to land claims, our request is for an increase to the staffing levels in land claims negotiations to speed up and finalize agreements. Right now, about 1.5 days per year are allocated to each land claim table. In the Northwest Territories, Colville Lake has a work plan to get to its self-government agreement in five years, but based on the federal government's allocation of 1.5 days of work per land claim table, that would draw it out to 20 years. From a reconciliation perspective and from an economic certainty perspective, this needs to be addressed. There are a lot of land tenure issues and it's important that they be resolved in the Northwest Territories, as elsewhere in Canada.
With regard to the Arctic policy framework that was approved in the summer of 2019, we hope to see funding for it in the upcoming budget. We all know that without money there will be no progress made. There are many initiatives in the Arctic policy framework that are great; we need work to progress.
With regard to telecommunications, we've identified three areas: broadband service, redundancy and cell service. We've highlighted some recommendations on those.
Right now in the Northwest Territories, all communities have cell service, but for the Internet, it's quite difficult for residents to participate in the digital economy or even stay in contact with one another. Fax machines are still required when the Internet goes down; that's all that you can rely on.
When it comes to cell service, most of our highways have no cell service. If you are about 10 minutes outside the capital of the Northwest Territories, you lose cell service. It isn't so bad if you're in an accident there, because you can probably make it back to town. However, if you're two hours outside Yellowknife, you have no way to reach anybody. Again, at temperatures in the -40°s, if you're in an accident with your family, you have to wait until the next vehicle comes, which means you could be waiting quite a while.
Therefore, we do think cell service, broadband and redundancy of Internet are important issues to be resolved, not only to allow residents to participate in the digital economy but to also ensure their safety and health.
I will turn to Sara, who will discuss our climate change recommendations.