Michael McLeod

That is probably a question better posed to the Department of Human Resources. The areas that are of concern under the collective bargaining are the issues of potential or what could be viewed as potential subsidy and the other issue is availability of units once we enter a program that may be required to be provided for everyone. So those are issues that need to be looked at and understood properly before we move forward.

Mr. Chairman, the Member is asking my opinion whether I think it’s right. All I can say is that public housing units are charged the government water rate, which is three times the actual residential rate.

Mr. Chairman, I have Jeff Anderson and Revi Lau-a with me.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, we will do a little bit of digging and find out what we have in terms of documents that could shed some light on the questions that the Member is raising. Mr. Chairman, once again, it should be clear that we only carry the balance of what the federal government is paying and what we are paying, so there is $23 million that goes against the debt wall and the rest is covered by the feds.

Mr. Chairman, we will ask Mr. Anderson, who has been dealing with this issue, to respond.

Mr. Chairman, the Market Housing Program was set up so that we could buy a number of mobile units, waive the BIP policy on it and put them in the communities where there was a demand and have them available for operation by the LHOs and/or for sale. That was the design of it. I think we bought 42 units overall over a couple of years and then didn’t carry it out any longer. The housing for staff is more towards trying to provide incentive to communities, development corporations and businesses in the communities, band councils or municipal councils to invest into providing units for people that...

Mr. Chairman, we’ll have Mr. Anderson explain the details of the $39 million.

Mr. Chairman, in most cases or situations we sign a universal partnership agreement with the community, the band or the municipality that allows us to work together in a partnership arrangement. The other area and probably more challenging is the ability to build houses on IAB lands or federal Crown lands. Our requirements are that there is a land tenure or a document that testifies to that. In most cases we have two ways we can go and that is to deal with the federal government to give the person a direct lease or the community a lease or the band a lease. The other one is to set up a third...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I’d like to say thank you for the comments Members have made, the suggestions, observations. Certainly I think everybody is very interested in the new federal funding that was highlighted in the budget. We still have to firm that up. We have a number that has been given to us as an indication of what the dollars are going to be flowing to the NWT. We expect to have those signed off in a couple of weeks and have that presentation to the standing committee, along with a number of other initiatives that were raised today that we are looking at making some changes...

Yes, Mr. Chairman.