Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation.

In regard to vacant public housing units in the NWT:

What is the vacancy rate of housing units by community?

What is the range and average period of vacancy for units?

Are vacant units heated or are they winterized and not heated until needed?

Again, I appreciate those remarks from the Deputy Premier. I know the members of Social Programs are listening closely today and I suspect there is, indeed, interest and need.

As I’ve mentioned, most governments across Canada are now taking this action, in recognition of the gains to be had. In fact, the federal government has announced a deficit of more than $50 billion owing to its effort to get Canada out of recession, but, meanwhile, one in five Canadian families, one in nine children, live in permanent economic recession. What is the Minister’s view on the need for a national anti-poverty...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is no one Minister responsible for addressing poverty, which may explain the lack of a focus and strategic effort on the issue, so I don’t know who to direct this to. Perhaps the deputy minister or the Minister of Health and Social Services; Deputy Premier, excuse me.

The extreme pattern in distribution of incomes in the Northwest Territories presents some challenges, and certainly, given our economic status in Canada and the Northwest Territories, the numbers of children and families in Canada and the NWT that are in poverty is nothing short of scandalous. What is...

Thank you, colleagues. Despite our amazing economic growth over the past decade, our poverty issues remain flat-lined or worse now. Evidence clearly shows that economic growth alone does not resolve poverty. Over the next week, I will be asking Ministers questions on this issue. Mahsi.

I appreciate those comments. So have we had any projects rejected by Canada or is it pretty much a matter of negotiating it through to the end, getting approval? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this week I had the privilege of attending the Feeding Change supper at the Salvation Army. More than 50 individuals, representatives of low income residents and social justice groups and agencies, attended to discuss poverty issues and solutions and share experience and learn about the anti-poverty campaign, Dignity for All.

The Dignity for All campaign is a national movement partnering 14 social justice organizations and endorsed by 175 organizations and increasing numbers of politicians at all levels nationwide. The goals are the creation of a federal...

Again, these dollars that we’re transferring to communities are investments. I am the first to get in line in terms of transferring responsibilities to our communities. We want to do it in a responsible way and I know when I make investments personally, and I suspect most people do this, they make sure that it’s done in a responsible manner and in a manner that gets the better dollar for the buck, the best value for the dollar; recognizing, of course, that you are not just making the investments for the benefit only of the entity that’s receiving the dollars. You have the benefits of all of...

I appreciate the Minister’s confidence in the communities and so on, but you need to base that on evidence. It may be improving, but it’s improving very slowly, as evidenced by, for example, the completion of I believe it’s three community energy plans out of our 33 communities.

We are finessing our communities into a fossil fuel future and that is something we can no longer tolerate as a society. We know what the costs are. There is no excuse for that anymore. Simply putting in these building standards will plug that hole immediately and bring immediate benefits to the communities.

We know...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Committee wishes to go on to the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I can’t help but make my perennial comment here. This commitment, obviously, I think to date we’ve spent somewhere in the order of $9 million looking after our tank farms and there are new federal regulations requiring additional monitoring equipment and fairly expensive equipment and so on. Of course, we have these tank farms in many of our communities. Again, I hope that this is brought into the accounting equation when we consider other energy infrastructure; for example, the Biomass Strategy implementation, should we get around to that when talking about what we...