Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The easiest answer is no.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I did hear the Members' comments, all of them that made general comments to the Minister of Finance's opening remarks. We do know this is a concern, and I did hear it when I did become Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, when I did sit with the NWTAC's executive. This year, there is a small increase in the funding for O and M as well as, I believe, water and sewer services. Since, I think, 2014, there has been small incremental increases each year. This funding really is used for core needs of the community, and I know we need to find ways to address that. As you...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Some of that is the CPI funding that they do receive as well as the gas tax. They can use either or look at any kind of special projects that they do. Our main focus is to have those core needs in place, the water, the sewage, the solid waste, for the health, wellness, and safety of our residents. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Since we've put some of this particular program in since 2015/2016 I think it's really a positive note to say that power consumption has declined by about 8 percent in the communities. That means our tenants are becoming more aware of their usage as well as, like I said earlier, trying to be more conservative on their energy and also a little bit more self-reliant, but also understand that we've got other programs that we've got to sustain within the NWT Housing Corporation.

I do have a list of some of the programs that we have done in this area: we invest in energy efficient building practices...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We will get a definition of all the core infrastructure in the communities. We will share it with Members. I do believe that office buildings are part of that core, as well.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in the Member's opening comments, in his Member's statement, he is right that, over the past three years, public housing tenant power rates have been gradually increasing to adjust in line with what other households in the NWT communities are paying under the GNWT's Territorial Power Support Program. The impact from the last base rate adjustment would be approximately $36 per month for the average household, and then it was about $87 per month, considering all base rate adjustments over the last three years.

Mr. Speaker, we do face a challenge here in the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We can put something in there, a definition of what the core needs are and how we use it to look at doing our funding to the communities and some of the questions that have already been asked. Yes, we can definitely do that.

Agreed.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We don't have that level of detail right now, but we can get that information for the Members and committee for future references. Just for clarity, while I'm talking about the funding gap, we will be bringing out the strategy within February. It is focused on the O an M budget. I know that a lot of our communities, when they build the infrastructure, the O and M is sometimes one of the challenges, that they have to keep it maintained. For that specific question for the Member, we'll get that information, and we will get it back to the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Some of those would include roads, as he mentioned, water, sewage services, solid waste sites, some of the main things that you would see in almost any other community. Maybe I will ask Mr. Tordiff if there was anything that I might have missed. You mentioned some other ones earlier, such as other facilities such as garages for the community for storage and things like that, but maybe through you, Mr. Chair, I'll ask Mr. Tordiff if he has anything further he can add.