NDP leader Jagmeet Singh paid another visit to the NWT on Monday to meet with Premier Caroline Cochrane and to listen to the issues in the North.
Many of those concerns revolve around a lack of infrastructure and funding, causing Northerners to live in sub-standard situations.
“Living in a Third-World country is not appropriate. We are Canadian, and you’ve got people in Canada living in such dire situations,” said Cochrane.
The discussions included this year’s wildfires and the territory’s housing shortage.
During the meeting, Singh acknowledged that there is a housing crisis in the North in terms of availability and affordability. The NDP leader said he was at Javaroma on Monday morning when a young man approached him and told him about his struggle to find a place to live in the North, which complicated his ability to find work.
Singh also mentioned that rents have been rising at an unsustainable rate.
“(Income) is not matching the cost of rent, and the cost of rent is putting people in a really desperate position,” he said. “The rate of loss of affordable homes versus what is being built is a losing battle.”
He added that his party is proposing help for community members who are facing losing their affordable housing when rent increases.
“This is an acquisition fund which would allow for community groups and not-for-profit groups — the territories have to deal with only one major company that’s not doing its job to maintain properties, so this acquisition fund would allow other community groups to purchase those buildings to keep them affordable,” Singh explained.
Premier frustrated
Cochrane expressed frustration over what she feels has been a lack of responsiveness from the federal government, with the NWT’s requests for help “falling on deaf ears” over decades.
“It’s disheartening when I fly all the way from Yellowknife and go to Ottawa,” she said. “I’ll get half an hour if I’m lucky with the minister, and sometimes they have to cut that short into five or 10 minutes, so you get a very little bit of time.”
Before the Monday afternoon press conference at the legislative assembly, Yellowknifer met Singh at Javaroma. He said he was in the NWT capital last year around the same time, and he wanted once again to meet with local people to hear about their experiences and struggles, such as fire and flooding in the North.
Commenting on the current federal government, he said, “The concern is that with the cost of living increasing, they’re not doing enough.”
“Basically, in this period of time when people are saying, ‘We can’t afford anything,’ (the Liberals) propose no solution,” said Singh. “We forced them to double the GST rebate and put money in people’s pockets.”