Yes, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to present the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation’s main estimates for the fiscal year 2009-2010, which requests a total GNWT contribution of $37.820 million.

This is a decrease of 28 percent from the 2008-2009 main estimates and is primarily due to the sunsetting of the Northern Housing Trust, which provided $50 million in federal housing investment over the past three years. Together with other revenues of $69.673 million the corporation will have approximately $107 million available to spend on housing in the Northwest Territories this fiscal year.

As...

Mr. Chairman, that is our goal. The numbers are very much correct and our target is to bring the core needs down. They are all relatively high. Based on 2004 information, we have to remember that and we should have our new core need figures for review or for public release in early summer of this year.

Our target, our goal, is to get all the core needs in the communities down to the national average, which I think is around 12 percent. We are still a long ways from that. We have, or will have, spent well over a million dollars in the last couple of years on housing and housing repair. We need...

We are trying to do something. We have a number of communities that are in the same situation. We are looking for options of how we can accommodate that. Our dollars come with rules. There are criteria. There are accountability issues. We have had requests from a number of band councils, aboriginal governments, to look at the concept of block funding. We are exploring that right now. We haven’t come to any type of conclusion whether that is doable or not.

We are checking, but I believe all our core needs, for the most part, our communities are at 30 percent except for Colville which is at 76 percent.

Mr. Chairman, it is a question, I guess, from the aboriginal government as to who owns the actual land. It would be relatively simply if everybody agreed that the federal lease would be in order, but in this case we are not getting that positive response from the band.

Mr. Chairman, I will have Mr. Anderson respond to that.

Mr. Speaker, I am sure all the people in the gallery and all the Members in this House and all people listening on the radio and watching on television can feel the tension in the air. It’s so thick you could cut it with a knife right now and it has been for some time. Mr. Speaker, it really is a tough situation we are in. It’s tough for all of us. We heard from many Members here speak with great emotion and voice some real concern.

Of course, Mr. Speaker, I have to mention it’s really a strange situation we are in also, because usually a government’s confidence is voted on after they present...

Mr. Speaker, we’ve heard the Member loud and clear on many occasions now speaking about Highway No. 7 and Highway No. 1 and other transportation infrastructure in his riding. We’d be glad to work with him and it’s our goal to have our roads strengthened and reconstructed and at some point have chipseal applied or other dust suppression measures.

Mr. Speaker, I’m struggling to answer the Member’s questions. He’s asking questions about the acceleration of the Building Canada Plan where we do have a number of projects, and he’s asking me to disclose what has been discussed with the federal government. That has not come before the House. Our budget has just been introduced today and has not been on the floor of this House, so I can’t really start discussing issues and projects that are in the budget at this point. I’d certainly be glad, to when we come to the portion of the budget presentation that involves Transportation. I can assure...

Again, I’d like to have further detailed discussion through the committee process. But we intend to look at our current housing stock. We have 2,400 units and a lot of them are coming to the point where they need a midlife retrofit, they need to be looked at in terms of energy efficiency, and that’s what we’ll be doing. We’ll also be working with the homeowners in the different communities to provide programs that will help and assist upgrade and look at energy efficiency as part of the requirements. Of course, we’ll be looking at investing in Homeownership Programs.

We certainly have many...