David Krutko

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I don’t have an update on that matter, but I will sit down with the Member and give her a briefing on it, at the time I receive it. I do not have an update on the question that has been asked, so I will take that as notice.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as all Members know, notices have been given with regard to the increases. Under the Landlord and Tenants Act, we do have to give three months' notice. The notice period has gone out and we are looking at implementing it April 1st. So it is based on the phase-in program. We are trying to conclude a four-year phase-in. We have two years left to go and we are in year three. So notices have been given, based on the rent scale implementation that has been put in place since 1995. So we are trying to conclude something that’s been there for 10 years. It’s...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the question with regard to rent increases, this is a project that has been implemented for a number of years that was a phase-in approach. They were looking at implementing it in 1995. They were supposed to phase it in over a four-year period, so it doesn’t have a big impact on the tenants who are in social housing. It was a system that was supposed to make it fairer and easier for those tenants to realize this is what the increase was. What happened was in 1997 the phase-in was put on hold and now we are bringing it back to conclude the last two years...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are working with those clients. Like I mentioned, there are roughly 34 clients we are dealing with who are going to be seeing the bulk of this increase which will have an affect on them. We are working with them through our local housing authorities and also through our program officers and counselling these clients to make them aware how the increase will affect them and how they deal with their arrears. There is a way that you can pay off your arrears over a period of time or do a biweekly pay down of your arrears. We are working with clients to try to ensure the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, like I mentioned earlier, the whole idea of the phase-in over four years is so it would not burden the tenant with seeing a major increase in one year. They’ve phased in the rent increase over the first two years and now we are trying to conclude that. To be fair to everyone out there, we are trying to ensure that those tenants, some 34 tenants, who will be seeing a major increase at the high end, but we also have to realize we have one of the lowest tenant rates in the country. In most jurisdictions, it’s 25 to 30 percent of your income. In the North...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to put out a challenge to the youth in the Mackenzie Delta. Mr. Speaker, as a young leader and a young man 14 years ago, I can recall the elders of the Mackenzie Delta put out a challenge to myself and the other leaders in the Mackenzie Delta to set the example and be sober and be an example to others.

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I took up that challenge some 14 years ago and have been sober since.

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I would like to challenge the youth of our communities to stop drinking, stop the abuse with regards to alcohol and drugs, but also take on the challenge...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I believe there are several ways that we can work with the communities and with the Sahtu region. That’s to devolve more authority to those communities through universal partnership agreements and also ensuring that the needs surveys that we develop are able to meet the most needs of the communities that are out there. Definitely the Sahtu is one of them. I think once we put forward our business plans for next year, we will be focusing on those needs surveys to ensure that we are able to accommodate the communities that are in most critical need. So we...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to thank the Member for his comments. I believe that we do have to encourage more people, especially with our growing economy or seeing people with more dollars in their pockets with the diamond industry and oil and gas industry. I think we have to direct people who are presently in that high-income range to get out of social housing and get them into the private housing market by way of our programs. We have the EDAP program, we have the DAP program, we work with the banking industry to get these people into a mortgage so they can own their own homes and be...

Again, Mr. Speaker, that request is a handful in regard to being able to accomplish all those goals in the short time that you are requesting, but I think it is something that I will definitely promise the Member that I will look into and see exactly where we are with a policy for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation and exactly what the cost to implement such a policy would be.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in regards to those units that do go in, I've heard the concern from communities with regard to how we construct these units. Most of them have been pre-designed, or we've implemented designs that have been constructed in other areas. Again the whole idea is that we have to realize that because in the North a lot of our transportation is done by roads or by barges, through the winter road systems we have to be able to package these things in such a way that most of them have been designed through the programs we do deliver by way of homeownership and...