Statements in Debates
The report will be done during the life of the 17th Assembly. As to exact time, I’m not quite sure; I’d have to get that information. But it will be done during the life of the 17th Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
That is another one of the discussions that we have had. There is some common ground here to house students who attend Aurora College in Inuvik. Many of them were living in the Blueberry Patch when it was determined that it was going to be demolished. They are all over town now in private market rentals. That’s another discussion that we will have. Again, once we formulate a plan, we will be sharing it with all stakeholders involved. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
That is a fairly significant amount of land. As far as what the plans are for it, I don’t think there are any concrete plans right now. Just the option of having that land available to us as we plan for future development will be huge. So there are no concrete plans in place right now. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It’s an ongoing evaluation, and one of the ways we find out if it’s working or not working is the number of houses that have been quitclaimed back to the NWT Housing Corporation. We put people into units, thinking that they have the ability to maintain these units. In some cases, many of them succeed, but for the ones who don’t, they quitclaim their units. They go back to the NWT Housing Corporation, and they realize they may be better suited as public housing clients.
We also have the HELP program, a two-year program that transitions them into homeownership. They’re responsible for all the...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t believe it’s a homeownership obstacle course. There may be a time when it was, but I think we’ve streamlined the programs where it makes it fairly easy to navigate through.
There is a course, once somebody puts an application in, Solutions to Educate People. We call it the STEP course. During that course they would have some courses or some information on finances and how to budget and things like that. So, we try and assist them through the systems so they know exactly what they’re getting into and what’s required of them once they become homeowners. Thank you...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I take that question. I will respond to the Member’s question. That could be an option, and it’s a discussion that we have to have with NWTAC because they are huge stakeholders in this. We can have that discussion with them and see if there’s an appetite from them to have a phased-in approach or have it phased in at all. Thank you.
As always, we will have discussions with stakeholders. Again, we’ll come up with a plan of what we might like to see on that and then we’ll have some discussion with stakeholders, get input from them as well as some committee. Then we will determine the next steps after that. It’s a very significant amount of land and I think it will go a long way in helping us address some of our needs in Inuvik. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The plan is to put a tender out and have the Blueberry Patch demolished this summer. 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...
Mr. Speaker, that will happen. On the Lands side of it, we’ve inherited the Territorial Lands Act, which is a huge piece of work. We also are working with the Commissioner’s Lands Act that we had worked with previously. That is a huge undertaking, and I can commit to the Member and all Members of this House that that work, I think, in the life of this government anyway will have to do the initial work. The bigger piece is going to have to be done, I think, in the 18th Assembly, to amalgamate those two acts. It’s a huge undertaking, but it’s one that we’re aware of and one that has been brought...