Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member is correct; these 159, we call them modernization and improvement projects, they are to upgrade our energy in a lot of these units because a lot of them are older units, so there’s a lot of good work done on them there.

As far as the number, we will have to pull that information together for committee and then I will make a commitment here that we will provide them with that information as to the number of units that we’ve had over the last few years that we’ve gone through the NMI process. So we’ll provide that to the Members. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have no opening remarks, Madam Chair, but I will bring in witnesses.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We work with the Arctic Energy Alliance and they’ve done an assessment and even go into feasibility, and if there are opportunities, and once the supply increased, we have to play a role in that, then that’s something we would have to consider. We can convert these over to biomass quite easily. We thought with the solar panels it would be a bit of a start and then as supply improves, they can be converted over. So we haven’t ruled out all our options. We are still looking at the feasibility right now. We have until next summer. Construction will start in the next fiscal...

I will pass that on to Mr. Stewart.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We’ll be sending a letter out here to all the communities soon. What we would like to do is we would like to work with the community organizations, because we need to have somebody in the communities to oversee the operation of the pilot projects in the community. We will be sending a letter out soon, explaining some of the criteria. As long as we’re able to find a partner in the community, I think that improves their chances.

I know with only four, the need is high across the Northwest Territories with only four. We’ll have to spread those out quite evenly all across...

We see our role now as support to the communities. We work with them closely in identifying best practices, and if there’s a need to try and identify some financing that they have to go and borrow to see their projects come on stream, then we work with them. We point out some of the challenges they might face. Then, at the end of the day, after we provide them all the advice, the ultimate decision is theirs.

Again, I give a lot of credit to the communities. Through the NWT Association of Communities and Local Government Administrators of the Northwest Territories they’ve done a pretty good job...

Thank you, Madam Chair. As far as the vacant units go, we’ve got 75 public housing units that are vacant and I think we’ve got a number of them that are under repair in addition to the 75. So those are ready to be allocated.

On the affordable housing side, we’ve got 58 units that are ready to be occupied and we have a number that are under repair in addition to the 58. So as you can recall, from a number of years ago, we were up to, like, 135 vacant units. So the number has gone down quite a bit.

I share the Member’s concern. We’re challenged with adding on to our public housing stock because...

Thank you, Madam Chair. There is a full formula review underway right now including the infrastructure dollars, and we’re targeting ’16-17 as probably the earliest we can make the increases. Then we try and access any other monies that we’re able to through the Building Canada Plan and any other monies, the gas tax money. I mean, if there is any opportunity for us as a government – and we’re getting quite good at it – trying to access any pots of money so we can pull it into the Territories and distribute it to the communities, they’ve done a pretty good job with that. The review is underway...

I will assure the Member that we won’t rest on our laurels. We’ll continue to explore all new types of technology out there and see how we can incorporate that into the design of our units. Then we will realize quite a savings because the costs of utilities aren’t going down. I think we see that every year. I think last year we had to come to the Assembly for an additional $1.2 million to help our LHOs with utility costs. We have, through our Modernization and Improvement Program, been able to identify some of the units and do some major energy retrofits on those, and I think in the long run...

The earliest that there would be an increase to the budget is 2017. Thank you.