Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That is correct. We are moving towards a more user pay. We did realize that, in a lot of communities when people are -- and not everyone, so I want to justify that -- but a lot of community members, when the Housing Corporation was paying for all the utilities, the lights were left on, the windows were left open in the winter months. The public housing units were used as the local car washes. We are trying to bring more people more responsibility within that, so the user pay is the reason for it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, there are budgets. I don't know the exact number. We'd have to pull them all through, but like I said, there is a budget for building of the homeless shelters within the community. We provide the operating money with that. We have food security initiatives that we provide to people. That comes with a budget. We also have a homeless assistance program. Again, I'm not sure of the total budget, but that is just people with up to $1,500, a one-time funding that they can actually use to repatriate, if they wish to go back to their communities, if they need to pay off a little bit of debt so...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As stated, this is just a new entity. We are working with the board sustainability, making sure they know rule and procedures and getting the support. We are looking at what will be needed. We will need an office. We will need a warehouse. Once we look at the various options, we will be putting that out for a request for proposal. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, we have a surplus and deficit policy in effect already. The policy states that if any local housing organization is over $100,000 in surplus that they need to re-invest that into housing. My goal is that housing organizations should not have a surplus. They need to be using that money. We have critical needs in the community, so I'm trying to just let them know that building a surplus is not acceptable, that they need to actually put those into the housing and repairs that are needed in communities. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, my years before being a politician, Mr. Speaker, I did work with the Yellowknife Women's Society, and so homelessness was something that I have been working with for many, many years. I recognize that the majority of people actually who access the supports in Yellowknife are from other communities. When I came on, I committed to not only looking at Yellowknife but other communities. Right now, we have a fourplex in Behchoko that is just recently done. That is ready for operation and that will serve people who are homeless within that community. We have a fourplex that's just being...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We don't have that detail with us right now on where that process is in that individual community. We were more broad in what we brought to present. I did hear him ask if it could be a month or six months. I can commit that the process will be done within six months. That gives me some leeway. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. When we looked at the allocations to the local housing organizations, we realized that some of them actually, like you said, had surpluses. Some of them actually had differing numbers. It is a formula that we need to look at, the amount of funding. As stated, we will be looking at and watching the monitoring very closely. I am committed to ensuring over the next two years that, if the local housing organizations may need more financials to be able to meet their needs based on, because they don't get all of the housing units, at that point, then we will look at reinstating...

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to recognize a constituent of mine. I'm going to try again, Mr. David Wasylciw, I think I might as well stick with "W," and a friend of mine, Nora Wedzin, in the gallery. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would really appreciate if the MLAs from the different regions would be able to help to get that information out. It is available on the website for the CMHC, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, so, if you can access it there, that has the best description of the program and more than welcome to help to dissimilate that information. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We did a review of the local housing organizations, and we found that a number of them actually had surpluses, so we have scaled back so that those surpluses, it is not okay to have local housing organizations having surpluses. We lowered the amount of funding to them, and we will be looking at different opportunities for them to actually bring in revenue and, if needed, we will increase those as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.