David Krutko

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, in regard to the infrastructure acquisition plan, these units are allocated or were approved in the budget on the basis of these units being approved. Because something that frustrates me is when you have regional staff telling people in the communities you may not be getting those units. I don’t think it’s up to those people at the regional level to make that decision. The decision is made here in this Legislature. We’re the ones that are approving this budget. I think it’s frustrating for myself to get phone calls from local people saying, sorry, those...

Just in regard to one of the items that you have on this page, this talks about research. I know that we had a pilot project a number of years ago called the log housing initiative program and I think that a lot of good work was done under that where you actually had people trained and you brought people in that were professionals on building logs houses. I’d just like to know exactly where is that program by way of moving forward. I think that a lot of communities are still requesting that we have such an initiative by way of log housing initiatives. We’ve built houses in communities...

Okay. With that, we’ll take a short break and then come back to deal with the Housing Corporation.

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Yes, I think the question is a board, a local housing authority board, there is no board in Tsiigehtchic and I believe Paulatuk is in the same boat. So I’m just wondering what would it take to reinstate a local housing authority board, because we do have that throughout the Territories, but for some reason the board was taken away. So I’d just like to know what’s the chance of reinstating that in other communities that may have lost their boards, because we do have more units on the ground than we had before. I think, if anything, that that was the argument before. I think we do supply most...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe that the corporation realizes we can’t do everything. I think it’s critical that we do formulate partnerships, especially for communities that are trying to find unique ways to deal with the housing crises in our communities. Also trying to work with the clients to work around some of the situations. I think it’s through those partnerships that we are going to have to develop a way.

A good example is the liaison positions that were put into communities. It was a $20,000 investment and for that investment that was made, it really improved the communications...

I’ll call Committee of the Whole to order. Today we have under consideration Bills 2, 4, 7, Tabled Document 62-16(4) and Minister’s Statement 47-16(4). What is the wish of the committee? Mr. Beaulieu.

Do I get my three minutes back?

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I was just stalling for time, but the issue I was talking about was in the area of elders programs in our communities, especially a lot of the elders need some maintenance of their dwellings. We talk about trying to keep elders in their homes. Especially it seems like a lot of times there are challenges to get people to do the work in the communities. I think that we as a government have to find a way that we can provide the service but also do it in a way that it is… If we can’t do one community, maybe look at bundling these programs.

I know the...

Minister of Housing.

Mr. Speaker, this issue is definitely in the public domain. There was a press release put out by the Minister this morning. The comments from my colleague Mrs. Groenewegen were about the situation that we had to deal with in the 13th Assembly and that reality is real. The issue of having a major deficit in this government has a major implication on all programs going forward. The press release clearly stipulates that this bridge is not going to cost us $165 million. It’s going to cost us $181 million and we don’t really know what the final price really is. Mr. Speaker, I think the question on...

Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee strongly recommends that the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation amend its procurement practices by separating the labour and material components of the corporation construction contracts to ensure small community contractors have a better ability to submit bids on projects occurring in small communities. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.