David Krutko

Moving on to page 5-49, financial and infrastructure services, operations expenditure summary. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Welcome, witnesses. General comments in regards to the Housing Corporation. Mr. Yakeleya.

Yes.

Good question. Minister of Housing.

---Laughter

Does committee agree if the Minister brings in his witnesses?

Another question I have in regard to this page is the majority of the projects are in regard to retrofits. I know that the local housing authorities, in most cases, do most of the retrofits on their own. I’m just wondering, is there extra money available for a community housing authority to take on more capacity by hiring more people when they have to basically do these major retrofits. So I think that, if anything, this is a perfect opportunity, especially for our communities who are struggling economically.

There’s not much happening, especially in the Beaufort-Delta region and people are...

I think one of the most accessible programs that we delivered in the Northwest Territories where we don’t have LHOs or people basically still are pretty independent was the HAP housing program where people went out of their way. They cut their logs. They took the initiative on themselves. They got a lot. They basically went out, put sweat equity into this thing. They helped build the house. At the end of the day, they owned it. Yet, there was money there to deal with electrical issues, deal with the mechanical stuff which was separate from the program. I think that, if anything, that is how we...

I’d like to call the House back to order. At this time, I’d like to ask the Minister of the Housing Corporation if he’d like to bring in witnesses. Mr. McLeod.

One of the problems we run into, especially with a lot of our local authorities, is having the ability to evict people if you know that they are carrying out illegal activities such as bootlegging, selling drugs out of public housing units. I think for a lot of our residents in our community they get frustrated saying that you know this is going on, you’re not doing anything about it, and I know we’ve been looking at changing the rules. I believe the way it reads right now, you are not allowed to carry out any illegal activities in public housing, but I think it’s a question of how far can you...

One of the other areas that we do, as a corporation, have to look at is that we are going to be taking back the rent supp program from housing. I noted that that money is still in the ECE budget but again, it has to come over. So there is going to be a transitional period.

I know that we were looking at some alternatives in regard to challenges we’re facing as the Housing Corporation such as land development. I know we have put land officers in place in different areas to assist in that area, but I think with the decline of the different programs, we may have to see where we can fit those...