Caroline Cochrane

As I stated earlier, we have a huge number of people in need within the Northwest Territories as a whole. We have over 600 families with children that do fall within our current income assessment. At this point, I am not willing to expand the income thresholds as they currently are. If we ever get to the place where we can address all of the low-income people within the Northwest Territories, then I would look at expanding that, but at this current point we cannot.

It probably won't be a big leap to actually develop this program. It would be a program on its own. Public housing is still a need, and we will still be looking at that. However, we do currently provide a transitional rent supplement program that is ineffective because it ends after two years and, in my opinion, people don't often have the skills that they need or the income to be able to be left without that support. So instead of having a transitional rent support program, it's merely transferring it over and actually having more of a long term. Like I said, it is more cost effective to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In an effort to try to keep as many of the Regular MLAs saying that I am their favourite Minister, what I will do is I will add these changes to the list of acts and regulations that we will be bringing to the five communities to review it on their priority list so that the communities actually can delegate which are the priorities, which ones we should be dealing with first. Then I can bring that back to the MLAs.

The Department of Municipal and Community Affairs regularly works with ITI on consumer-related tourism issues. However, most of them are related to public safety, such as fire protection, etc. Again, we haven't had a lot of complaints. We tend to work when we have complaints in the area. Any time there is an issue, we work cross-departmentally to define those. We also work federally as well, because the federal government also has a role in consumer complaints. When the issues are federal, we will work with them as well to address the issues.

It is well known within the Legislative Assembly that I am in the process of reviewing every single policy and program with the Housing Corporation. There are many that I think inhibit people from obtaining, maintaining, retaining their homes. I will be restructuring all policies with that goal in mind to house people.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, the policy is not to simply house as many people as possible. The reality is that we need to house people adequately and appropriately and consider their safety. I am not going to cram people into buildings without considering all of the safety needs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Due to the high needs of residents within the whole Northwest Territories and our current wait list to access public housing support, we will not be, probably, at this point extending our income threshold. So it would be for people who are at moderate to low income. I don't know the exact rate for Yellowknife, but I believe it's under $100,000 a year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can commit to talking to my colleague, the Minster responsible for Housing, to look at suggestions, specifically for low-income families. Actually, we are doing some work around energy conservation and just green energy in principal. We are rolling out a LED Lighting Program this year that we will be putting in LED lights within every home. We are looking at redesigning homes so, that instead of having single units that are not so energy efficient but also very expensive, in order to address both energy efficiency and cost of living, we are looking for more shared...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The corporation itself does work with Lands, so when they offer workshops we do attend those and we offer them out to the communities. Currently, though, we meet with their local housing organizations once a year to provide training opportunities. So I will take that into consideration. The big focus, though, this year with our training of local housing organizations will be on customer service. I do agree with the Member who says we need to get out and knock on people's doors and reach out to people more. So part of that is actually making sure that people have the tools...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. At this moment, no, we are not. These are ideas. The home ownership ideas, the rent supplement ideas, all of those things are on the table. Once we compile all survey results, we will organizing them into categories and all of the suggestions will be considered, not only the ones that we have identified, because I am assuming that, out of 44,000 people within the Northwest Territories, people have incredible ideas that will assist us in the goal of helping people to obtain, retain, and maintain their homes. Thank you, Mr. Chair.