David Krutko

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, my understanding is that most of these leases are locked in for the term of the lease, but there is an escalation rate that is in there that we do based on the escalation rate that they are able to move on that, but my understanding is that these are locked in leases for the term of the lease. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, that is the goal that we do have by way of increasing the staff we do have in the corporation, especially at the regional level so they'll have more accessibility to communities. One of the things that we do do is that when we have a big project, we will identify somebody specifically for that one project. But if it's just a couple of houses here and there, I think it's uneconomical to have someone in that community just to deal with two or three houses. So that's why a lot of the project officers are based out of the regional office.

Again, we have...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this will be an application-based program where we will screen the application, identify which clients we feel meet the program. One of the things we are seeing is we are hearing a lot of complaints from people who are in social housing who are paying the high end of the rate scale. Because of that, they don’t seem to be getting any further ahead with the amount of money they are paying on rent. Because of that, we are trying to free up some social housing and get those people who are paying at the high end of the rent scale into homeownership. Yes, we...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, at our present allocation for housing, we deliver roughly about 118 houses using our budget exclusively. The additional units use the federal funding, is key. But again, I do have faith in the federal system that we have had the legislation passed. We have had dollars identified which is $1.6 billion. Out of that, CMHC has devised a way to allocate, and through the provincial-territorial housing Ministers, I believe we have had support from our colleagues in the provincial and also federal levels. I think, because I feel comfortable that we will get...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I believe the Hay River seniors’, we have land that we are allocating to the project. I think roughly the estimate on the land plus I think a bit of cash is $450,000 towards that project. Again, it is subject to different approvals and whatnot. But with the land and the allocations, it is roughly valued at about $450,000.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I will see about getting back to the Member with that information at the end of February, probably March, but I will make an attempt to look at these and see exactly which ones are up for review in five years or whatever, and also exactly what the costs associated with the terms of these are, and also the length of time that those leases are out there for.

It roughly works out to one-third of the number of units we are looking at allocating.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the idea of the program is to get people into actually paying the operational costs of those units, so they will be responsible for paying the power costs, the utility costs, and ensure they realize there is a cost associated with homeownership. That is the portion they will have to be paying for two years. Once they have gone through that process for the two years, at that point if they want to buy the unit outright, they will continue to pay the utility costs and then become homeowners. The problem we are having with the transition from moving people...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, we are hoping to have the consultation concluded in the next two to three months, so we're able to have something back for our next sitting which is in June. So we're hoping to arrive at that date with the review and have that completed and have something hopefully back to committee and back to the House for June session. Thank you.

Just to make it clear on the contributions from ATCO, there is no contribution from ATCO. The money the Member mentions is that $26 million will be achieved through the selling of the units. So we sell the asset. We will sell enough to retain $26 million through private sales. The other thing is that we are talking here of some 1,400 houses for $230 million. Economically, you couldn’t accomplish that in regards to stick-built construction wherein someone who lives on low income needs to be wanting to own their home can arrive at that. The number we are looking at is about $100,000 to...