Jane Groenewegen

In my Member’s statement, I outlined the run around that our constituents must go through in attempting to pay their rent for social housing. Mr. Speaker, we want them to pay their rent, but the number of hoops that we are putting them through I think would be a discouragement to anybody paying their rent. Can the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment inform this Assembly what he intends to do to reduce the apparent bottleneck in income support offices and speed up the transmittal of rental calculation information to local housing authorities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I’m going to outline the convoluted process that our constituents who live in social housing must go through when attempting to pay their rent. These are the actual experiences of one of my able-bodied constituents in Hay River and does not take into account the additional struggles that are faced by the elderly, handicapped, or those who do not live close to the downtown core.

Mr. Speaker, first you have to go to Northland Utilities and pay your power bill, as proof must be submitted at the time your rent is calculated. Then you have to walk over to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, your committee would like to report progress. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of the committee today? Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, Mr. Speaker, I think that people are very interested in being timely in paying their rent. They don't want to have a bad record of rent payment, but I think we are making it somewhat difficult for them and I will certainly look forward to any report of streamlining or enhancing the system that would help this group of tenants in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In this day of modern information technology, has the Minister given any consideration to a shared computer information system that would allow the ECE office to transmit the rent calculation information to the housing authority in a more timely manner, somehow that they could both access the same source of information? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I sense he’s been feeling left out lately.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to speak to this point of privilege in the House today. I've been here for a little bit longer than some of the Members on this side of the House and I think I've pretty well seen it all when it comes to different forms of intimidation, threats, I think since I've been here. I take it very seriously, because I think since I've been here I've had my business threatened, I've had my family threatened, I've been threatened. As a matter of fact, there was even an RCMP inquiry had to made into a threat that was made, that somebody actually...

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The motion is in order. To the motion. It’s not debatable. I mean, it’s not debatable, forget about to the motion. All those in favour of the motion? All those opposed? The motion is carried.

---Carried

I will now rise and report progress. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That was one of the questions I was going to ask. There used to be a practice of tabling Ministers' travel in this House and it helped us gauge the kind of work that was being undertaken by the Ministers, and it was informative material. So what happened to that practice and is that still done? Thank you.