Norman Yakeleya

Mr. Speaker, would the Minister be willing to share what she can in terms of the internal report on the types of facilities that are required in small regions? If not, will she be looking at working with the Sahtu Regional Health Board in terms of looking at the needs for such a facility in our region?

I just want to get clarification on what I heard. I want to ask again in terms of these units, over a number of years some of my residents have not seen improvements in their units. They are charged a high percentage of income off their cheques and they are getting quite frustrated because there are no improvements to some of their units. Doors are not shutting properly, windows are kept open on top because of the extreme amount of hot air that is going up to the second floor. The bottom floor is pretty cold. There are lots of things that I hope the Minister can do to rectify it. This has...

Mr. Chairman, on the debt repayment, I might be not too sure about the question here. In terms of the housing rental in our communities in terms of our debt, is this the place to ask questions on rental collections or is this a whole other issue with the federal government in terms of social housing in terms of debt repayment?

Mr. Speaker, this morning I had the opportunity, along with a constituent of mine, to visit the Stanton Hospital as one of our elderly people was brought in from the region to receive medical care at this hospital. This elderly lady is in her 90s and I’ve watched these dedicated staff up there, the nurses, take care of her. As she was lying there -- me and my constituent were talking -- I had a vision there in the hospital, Mr. Speaker, in terms of wouldn’t it be nice if we had this type of facility in the Sahtu where we could bring our elderly people into the Sahtu region rather than fly all...

Mr. Chairman, the issue of units I have talked about in my region. I guess you need to upgrade some of the units. Just on this issue here, power, heating; some of the units, when you go into them you can see a half an inch to a quarter inch, you can see light under the door when you close the door. One of the complaints is you still have to pay for the power that they use to heat their houses and that. I think the Minister knows this type of issue follows in our communities. I guess those units need to be fixed up. I am going to ask the Minister about working with the tenants. They are...

Mr. Chair, is it possible to get a copy of these 500 units that they administrate across the Northwest Territories? Because certainly I would be interested in asking further questions on this. Certainly in some of my communities people aren’t making any profits, so I don’t know if they would be qualified under that. This here, in terms of the funding, it seems like it’s been a...I don’t know. I’ll wait until I make my conclusion, but I need to see some more information as to this funding here for the 500 units.

It’s good news. I don’t know what they’ve done but it seems to have been brought up. I guess historically the LHOs in my region -- and I could be wrong on this one here -- collected up to 90 percent of the collections and this still has an impact. In regard to the funding, I’ll have to wait and see, I guess, for another couple of years to see where it will go but...I’ll wait a couple more months to see the numbers but this is what I’ve been asked to say on behalf of the people in my community on this issue. They are quite concerned. The Minister has said that it’s going back up again so...I’d...

Mr. Chair, including this program here, so this program was somewhere in your new design of the funding that this program will be included as part of the criteria, requirements that when this issue comes up that the Housing Corporation will be able to satisfy, say yes, we can deal with this in this area. Thank you.

Thank you. Then with the amount of time that I have here, Mr. Chairman, would the Minister look at this amount of dollars per senior and direct his regional office to look at proposals from communities to say we want this contract for the seniors? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thought about this and am going to remain with my previous comments to this discussion that we had, that I am not going to be supporting this motion.