Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I believe I answered this question a few days ago. There is opportunity, yes, to cancel. At what cost, I am not sure at this point. The request was proposed to me yesterday to look at extending the timelines by two weeks. We are looking at that, we have some legal people who have given us an opinion, whether we are in a position to do that at this point, do we have adequate time to give notice, we are not sure. We are checking also with the barge companies to see if we can move the dates given to us for shipping. Right now we are being told that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will commit to doing that. I will commit to working with the required Ministers that would be affected by this project. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Speaker, I would welcome the opportunity to look at a pilot project in the communities. Our concerns, the high cost components of log buildings in all the different regions, of course, is the cost of the logs and of the professional trainers. Our target and our priority is to promote homeownership. If there are ways we can use our existing programs to benefit the Members and their desires to put in log units, I’d certainly look at that. We have a number of programs that can fit the bill. We can modify some of our EDAP programs possibly or IHP or look specifically at a pilot...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this afternoon I would like to call the Assembly’s attention to the important work that CARS observer-communicators do to maintain safe and reliable air transportation at our community airports.

The community aerodrome radio station program, better known as CARS, provides essential weather and runway information to the aircraft and pilots serving our small communities. In recognition of the contribution that the observer-communicators make to safe air navigation in and out of our community airports, the Department of Transportation presents awards every...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, over the years we have looked at a number of different ways to assess rent for people in the most need, mostly in public housing. We have determined that our system has been the most responsive, as we do monthly assessments. There have been a number of initiatives raised now in this House to take a look at different ways we can improve, or look at changes. I am always willing to do that. I thank the Member for bringing some of those to my attention. I will also take in the request from the Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes for the flat rent scales and come...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe it is housing theme week.

---Laughter

The issue by the Member is a serious one. It is something that has also been noted by the Auditor General that it is an issue that has to be focused on. We have been attempting to improve our collections. We have, over the last couple of years, seen drastic improvement. We still have a number of tenants who are in arrears. Our whole social program is based and assessed on tenants' ability to pay, with a ceiling of 30 percent. I will take that back for a review. It may be time that we do that, and I will get back to...

Mr. Speaker, the contract is a contract for commodity, we have the detail here. It spells out the technical information that we were looking for. We are looking for a best-cost scenario. It is only for the mobile homes at this point; FOB Hay River for the barging communities, and the communities that are on the road system, FOB there. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I was not involved as a Minister in that initiative to waive the BIP for the correctional centre. In fact, this is the first request by the Housing Corporation to waive the BIP. So we had not done an analysis on what the results were with the correctional centre. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I believe we have, as part of our technical team in the Sahtu, a person that specializes in log building. I will follow up the request with my officials and we will do some preliminary work in that area. We can also have a sit-down discussion with community members, if it is desired, when we have our community tour. I believe we’re planning to go there this coming month, sometime toward the end of this month. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we’ve had programs targeted towards log homes in the past. We’ve done several projects in the Member’s riding. I believe it was Deline that came up with some very nice log units there. However, our experience with the logs over the years has been that it’s very costly and we are currently working with one community to do a pilot project, but I would certainly entertain any proposals or any discussions the Member may have. Thank you.