Robert C. McLeod

We will have to examine our options. I am willing to meet with the council and the residents of Fort McPherson to fill them in on the deficit and some of the work that’s being done. There are other options that we may have at our disposal. We may have to look at possibly dissolving council and appointing a public administrator in the community. Again, these are options that we need to explore and I am going to meet with the leadership and the citizens of Fort McPherson, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, we can’t, but we will work with the community of McPherson. There has been some work done already to have a deficit recovery plan. We will work with the community to see what their options might be as far as recovering some of the deficit that they are currently running. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, addressing housing needs is a priority of the 17th Legislative Assembly and the NWT Housing Corporation. This year is the first year of a multi-year plan that will see considerable investments in housing infrastructure that will have significant impacts on housing in our communities.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a lot of confidence in our LHO maintenance ability to do these condition ratings. We do have some training with them. The latest batch of condition ratings would have been completed as of March 31, 2014. Out of the 2,160 units across the NWT, we’ve got 2,146 that have been completed. They were completed as of March 31, and again, we do have a tremendous amount of confidence in our LHO maintenance staff’s ability to do these condition ratings as they have been doing them for a while.

I can assure the Member that this community is safe and is taken care of. As with every other community, there are small issues that we have to deal with from time to time. As far as the mould goes, our folks in the community are getting more educated on mould and its effects. If they see mould and they need a further opinion, we do have folks in the district offices now that have taken mould identification and remediation training. We will send them to the community as we did with another community in the Beau-Del where we heard in the community meeting that they had some issues with mould...

Two of our units in the community are very good, but I will commit to going in there and doing an assessment. We have people from our district office going up there all the time and working with the community, and some of the numbers may be different because the numbers that we use are the assets that we control. There may be some homeownership units that are in there that the residents might be counting amongst our units because Housing would have been responsible for building those units in the first place, but at the end of the day they’re homeownership units.

I will follow up and make sure...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize Lorna Storr, a well-deserved induction into the Education Hall of Fame. I’ve had the opportunity to know and work with Lorna for a number of years. I don’t think she has missed an Arctic Winter Games since they’ve started in 1970. I look forward to seeing her at many more.

I also want to congratulate the other recipients for being inducted into the Hall of Fame. It’s very important that we recognize the contribution that our educators make across the Territories. Judy also sends her congratulations. She asked where your clipboard was...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following letters, plus attachments, from Mr. Robert Hawkins, MLA, Yellowknife Centre, dated February 24, 2014, and May 2, 2014, regarding the consumer affairs division. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I said before, I’m prepared to confirm all of those numbers, any information. I’ll confirm the nine units, whether some of them are homeownership units that may have been just lumped together with our own assets.

As far as the mould issue goes and the competency, again, our folks on the ground, because there are more and more issues with mould, there are many remediations, and that we try to communicate to the residents of the communities, but once we identify a unit with mould, we either try to remediate it, or in some cases where it’s not being able to be remediated, we will dispose of the...

Thank you. We welcome any opportunity that we have to interact with the youth and hear their opinions. I don’t know if I was aware of the event that was taking place in Fort Providence. Perhaps if the MLA had invited me I would have gone.

---Laughter

So I'll put some of the blame back on the Member. We welcome any opportunity we have to work with the youth. We have an excellent team over at MACA that works with youth and they’re all over the place, all parts of the Northwest Territories working with the youth. So we welcome any opportunity, and if there’s an opportunity for me to meet with the...