Caroline Cochrane

As I stated before, I don't have the authority to tell all government departments what to do. I do believe in promoting water. I have committed to bringing it forward to Cabinet. Cabinet is sitting here. I will promote that we should be drinking water from a glass.

Mr. Speaker, this government has heard that the people of the Northwest Territories want 911, and we have listened to them. In his budget address, the Minister of Finance announced that this government plans to implement a territorial 911 program. Today, I wish to take this opportunity to expand on this important announcement. In 2015, the Government of the Northwest Territories departments, key partners, and community governments worked together to identify viable options for a territorial-wide 911 system. Experts were hired to examine the current environment and provide recommendations...

It is not the priority of the NWT Housing Corporation to punish people. People who do come forward and bring in their income assessment, we have gone back and renegotiated their rent charges based on their income that they supply us.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So like I said earlier, we are trying to get all of the tenants to file their income tax. We have made some allowances for seniors, in all honesty, who aren’t really receptive to change, and so within a few situations we have allowed them to come in and give a monthly breakdown of rent. I should note that within our applications, and it's not new, it's been forever, we can still ask for the income tax for verification of rent. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We are really trying to work with our tenants to actually file their income tax, especially for lowerincome people. When people do not file their income tax, they are losing out on income, for example, the Child Tax Benefit, et cetera, and their tax return monies if they are lowerincome, so it is something we are really trying to advocate for tenants, that it is in their best interests to actually file for their income tax.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Members already know that I did extend the housing survey. We have not gotten all the feedback from that survey yet. I am interested in seeing it. I have seen some issues come across my desk, though, regarding the rental scale and the deductions from the income tax.

One of the things I should note is that I know that it causes some seasonal employment difficulties, but, if you look at the areas, it ranges between $10,000 and $20,000 that a person can make extra, depending on their income, before they actually get increased rent, so that is significant. The other thing...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am actually quite glad that I get a chance to talk on that. I think the department knows how anxious I am to get the survey results in. It was really painful, actually, to extend it for another month to get people. Not that I don't want to get the feedback, that's why I agreed to extend it, but because I recognized that we have a lot of work to do. Yes, we are very fortunate that we, actually, most of the people, the replies have been done on the Survey Monkey, the electronic tool. We only had a few that came in in written form. We have been busy right now. We have...

So we do try to base our rents off income. We are moving with the income tax and some people have been allowed to file their monthly income statements. However, if neither of those are provided to the Housing Corporation, in all fairness to people we still have to define a rent, and so we do charge the top market rents on our rent scale to people who do not either give any form of income provided to us.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I stated earlier the other day, the housing survey, once we get the results in, will be divided up. Some of them will be very easy fixes. Things like, for example, students being able to leave their communities without being penalized, people going for medical assistance and things, those are easy decisions.

Tougher ones, this one that might impact other departments, those ones will take a little bit longer. For example, if housing rent is contingent on them getting income support, then that is a crossdepartmental issue, and so we will have to work crossdepartmentally...

One of the conditions within the new determining of rent scales is that people who have difference in income can go in monthly and provide that to their local housing organization. If they do that, they will be reassessed based on their monthly income. However, again, it is important to note that the income tax has been showing that not everyone has been reporting their income, and so that is also a concern for us.