Thank you, Mr. Julian.
I will certainly say hi to Mr. Bevington. He comes to our “lunch with the mayor” meetings every month.
I'm sorry that I don't have the costs of what that would be. Certainly it is far less than $14 billion.
We know that housing across the territory is dire. We have a lot of what we call “hidden homeless”, where people are not homeless in the same circumstances as you would see in the south. We have overcrowding of housing units at an extreme level.
Just as we've seen in Nunavut in the past month, if we have an outbreak of COVID, it will spread because of the interconnectedness of the communities. We don't have the same medical services you have down south—which, again, are already over-taxed for the people who are being serviced.
The dire state of housing inadequacy and the deficit of housing supply in the Northwest Territories will require an extraordinary allocation of federal funds to overcome. A long-term federal funding commitment is critical to address the unmet housing needs.
I am very sorry that I don't have numbers for you today. We can certainly look into that and get something to the committee as best we can.