Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to have track tryouts this afternoon out back. If you can walk that far, you’re on the team.

This is a great time across the Northwest Territories. With all the graduation ceremonies that are going on, it’s just a very positive time. In Inuvik we have a number of ceremonies that are taking place. It starts right from the four-year-olds, the Aboriginal Head Start program, with their little gowns and they graduate into kindergarten. We have our kindergarten children graduating into Grade 1.

Then on Saturday in Inuvik, the East Three Secondary School is having...

As far as the ones who have young children, I’m not quite sure of that. I do have the numbers for the people who are waiting for one-bedroom, two-bedroom, three-bedroom and that would give you a fairly good indication of the number of people that are in the family. But we recognize that our largest growing segment in the population are those with young families, so we’re going to take the direction that we put up a lot more family one-, two-bedroom, multiplex-type units across the Northwest Territories and I think that will address that particular issue.

I’ll get the numbers for the waiting...

We’ve taken a number of steps in the last little while to try and address some of the issues that the Member speaks of. We’ve had a number of vacant units in the communities. Through an Affordable Housing Initiative, we built a lot of these units on spec, assuming we were going to have the clients for them. Unfortunately, we overestimated the clients who might be eligible, so we turned a lot of those units into public housing units to try and address the public housing shortage.

The units that the Member speaks of, we’re just in the process now of... Those again were built trying to transition...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have 894 people on the housing waiting list across the Northwest Territories. I’m not sure if we have them broken down as to those with disabilities or not, but I will find out and I will share the information with the Member. Thank you.

We apparently budgeted $45 million to put into housing programs for this year. I think we’ve got about 45 new or replacement public housing units, and I will confirm that number and share it with the Members. Plus, I’ll also share the allocation.

The Housing Corporation, as the Member said, I think has seen a change in the last five years. We’ve tried to address a number of housing issues. We’re taking over the funding from ECE. I think we’re going to be able to access probably 55 more units in the capital, plus a number of the other programs in the capital that we support through contributions...

That’s one of the roles that our department plays now, is we work with the communities to help them with technical advice, financial advice if we have ways they can access the funding or use the funding, and any other advice that we can give them. We will work closely with the community.

I can say that I believe it was the community of Fort Smith that just finished a track that they used some of their capital money to build too. I haven’t seen it yet, but I understand it’s a fairly good track. The opportunities are there, and again, the communities will take advantage of those opportunities and...

Through a lot of our youth programs and that we have with our sporting partners across the Northwest Territories, they run a lot of clinics in the small communities. There are many different types of sporting clinics they have in the communities. Track may be one of them. I would have to confirm that. But there’s a lot of opportunity out there for those in the small communities who have a desire to get somebody in there to help them with some training. The opportunities are there. Thank you.

Again, all the money we give for capital infrastructure, we give to the communities and they make the decisions. As well, with the gas tax money. With some of the new Building Canada Plan money, if the project fits and that criteria fits, they would be able to use that too.

As far as identifying any other pots of money, we’ve been able to work very closely with our provincial and territorial colleagues in trying to access any extra monies that might be available. If there are any monies available from the federal government, we’ve become quite good at trying to access some of that money and...

[Microphone turned off] …on that, but I can tell the Member and all the Members that the communities, with their community public infrastructure money and with some changes to the gas tax money, are able to use some of those funds to identify infrastructure. Track would fit the criteria and they’d be able to make the decision to put a track in the community if that was their desire. Thank you.

We don’t put any more units in communities on speculation unless we know we have clients for them. One of the things the Member asked was what we had learned before. One of the things we did learn was, when we had the Affordable Housing Initiative, we put many units on the ground, assuming that we had people in the communities who would qualify for these units. Unfortunately, we didn’t get as much uptake as we thought. Many people didn’t qualify. We converted a lot of them over to public housing units, which was well received by most communities.

Our position now is we would like to make sure...