Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My understanding is we have an eight-plex in Fort Good Hope. I believe this is what he’s referring to. That is empty. I think we’re in the process of selling that particular unit. I think we have another eight units that we might be in talks with the local government about taking on these units.

Mr. Speaker, community governments are critical partners in building a strong and independent North. As we near the end of our term, it is a good time to look back at the work we have done to support community governments and the challenges that still remain.

In 2013 the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs launched the Accountability Framework for community governments. This tool is used to measure the performance of community governments based on 14 defined indicators. MACA is currently collecting and analyzing the 2014-2015 data that will be used to create a unique work plan with...

Thank you. We’d love to clean house, but again, we’re faced with some of the challenges of the proper assessment and remediation. We would be more than pleased to sell these units to a community group as we did in Tulita and they took on responsibility of those units. I think they were in the process of renovating them and they would rent them out and they would collect the revenues. We’re more than willing to partner with communities where we have a lot of these vacant units, and if there’s an opportunity for them to take those off our hands and fix them themselves then we have other...

Every community has an allotment of public housing, and as we take the units out of stock, we have a disposal plan. We try to sell off the unit if we can. Those that we dispose of, with the new WSCC regulations we have to do a hazardous material assessment and abatement before we’re able to dispose of those units. So it’s added on a tremendous cost to our ability to dispose of many of these units. The Member and I were having a conversation where, back in the day, they’d just come in with a backhoe, take the unit down and haul it off to the garbage dump. We don’t have that ability anymore. So...

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to recognize my wife of 36 years and, Lord willing, another 36. I’m glad you’re able to join us in the Assembly. My wife, Judy. Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is absolutely correct; funding has stayed at the same level for a while. We have been very fortunate to have been able to leverage some federal dollars to send the communities. We recognize there is a bit of a shortfall, and as far as the assessment, it was part of the formula funding review. Not only did we look at the O and M, we looked at the capital as well. That work has been completed. Thank you.

The reason we signed it off, it was an oral question that I believe was asked by the Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley, and we just signed off the response today, so we will be providing it to everyone. Thank you.

All our planned replacement public housing units next year are going to be multi-type units. All our planned affordable housing units are going to be a duplex or a multiplex-type unit.

Yes I do, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, we’ll be a part of the group there and if there are opportunities for us to provide some input and be a part of the process, and even if there was a cash contribution then it would be part of future Housing Corporation’s capital plan.