Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Currently, we have positions for 10 to 15 apprenticeships. At this point, nine of them are filled, but it will be an area that we will be looking going within our program renewal because providing capacity within the communities is part of the answer. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The program renewal is the biggest priority of the corporation this fiscal year coming up, and so I see that the rent supplement program will be like I said, there are easy, medium, and hard ones to do; it is one of the easier ones. It is not something that we have to go crossdepartmental or crossjurisdictional, so I see it as happening within the first six months from today. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Although I do not want to be known as the Minister who always says yes, in this case I will say yes that we will consider that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do recognize that there is a huge need to provide seniors' housing, so we are looking at that. For many years, we focused on multifamily units. We are looking at continuing with multifamily, but also looking at singles' units that will work with seniors, as well. We are looking at seniors' market rental units so that we can actually have combined seniors' units, and that will bring in some income. So, it will be a combined seniors' centre that has some market rental units that people can afford and some public housing, which would supplement that, as well.

Like I have...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I apologize for the miscommunication. No, the money that the federal government gave us we used to renovate the other four family violence shelters. Tuktoyaktuk actually, above and beyond the federal money, the Government of the Northwest Territories through the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, so outside of this money, we provided them a unit that they can use for their shelter because their shelter was beyond economical repair. That is on top of the federal money. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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.

I can absolutely commit that tiny houses will be one of the areas that we look at, and go further to stating that we are looking at developing partnerships with municipalities and Aboriginal governments to address their own housing needs within their communities, and we are already forming partnerships with some municipalities on a form of a tiny house.

As the corporation, though, I do want to stress that my own worry is that when we only look at tiny houses within an independent, solo idea, then we're not perhaps looking at the cost of living and the energy efficiency. So I am also looking at...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The grants and contributions have nothing to do, actually, with the Aboriginal governments. This is actually the 2012 dollars that is for the local housing organizations. That was the surplus, and so, if they have $5 million in surplus, then that $200,000 is coming from the monies provided to local housing organizations. Thank you, Mr. Chair.