Statements in Debates
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, 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, 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...
Yes, Mr. Speaker, we are definitely willing to look at that, but just ensuring that the budget has to be passed through this House, so with that being something that we would look at because I believe we do have to look at housing by way of a long-term planning process. Hopefully, with the 10-year plan we develop that to ensure that we follow what we have in our need surveys and implement that into our 10-year business plan so that people can realize that we are confronting these problems over a 10-year period so people can see how we are fixing these problems and not having projects on the...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we are taking this issue very seriously. Mould is a very big health problem that we see and it does have direct effects. I know this is more than just a housing problem; it’s also a health problem. We have hired an environmental company to look at the mould problem in the Fort Liard area and also look at a way that we can deal with that problem. We have put forward a report that we are looking at dealing with this problem with regard to Fort Liard. There is presently someone who has been hired who is doing a thorough review by way of a report to look at...
Again, Mr. Speaker, because we do have units that we maintain every other year, we put aside 10 to 12 units in a community so that we can renovate them over a period of time. We move our clients to different units. Because of the number of turnover that we have because of our maintenance programs, that number is inconsistent, so I can’t give the Member that information because it is a moving number. We do take units off of our system in order to meet our maintenance program. So because of that, those vacancies may not be…Again, I will make an attempt to get that information to the Member.
Mr. Speaker, that is one of the goals we are trying to meet but, based on the budget restraints we do have, in order to meet those goals there are certain things that have to happen. In order to do that we have to sell off units by way of almost 50 units a year to individuals who are either living in those units or to the private sector and replace those units with multi-plex units -- like I mentioned, the six-plex or eight-plex units -- to ensure that we’re able to fill that gap in order to meet that. The key to this is we have to change the way we do business, but to meet that goal we have...