Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do have policies, and we try to follow them as closely as possible. The Member asked if we were flexible. I think we’ve proven in the past that we can be fairly flexible. One of the things we don’t want to do is do a lot of one-off deals. We’ll look at each situation as it arises, but policy sometimes is to protect ourselves, to protect the clients out there and to make everything fair for everyone. But I think we’ve proven on a couple of occasions that we can be flexible looking at individual circumstances. Thank you.

A lot of the issues that we hear from the groups that we meet with across the Northwest Territories, Housing always has it on its radar. It’s just a matter of working with them to try to find some common ground. I can tell the Member that with the concern that was in Inuvik, I know staff up there are working with the folks up in Tuk to see what we would be able to do. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, the Member is correct; we are concerned with declining CMHC funding. We have made some adjustments to try to control our costs so we don’t have to keep coming back to the Assembly every year for funds to offset our losses. We did make our case to the federal Minister when we were down in Ottawa. We are planning on having an FTP quite soon, because we are the co-chairs this year. I know our other jurisdictional partners are also concerned with this because it affects them a lot more than it’s affecting us.

I believe we have briefed committee at least once or twice on what our plans...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The new homeless shelter did get some money to operate the program out of there. As far as the exact amount, it’s not on here but they did receive some money to operate a soup kitchen. Thank you.

I do, Mr. Chair.

As far as an evaluation, I think an ongoing evaluation and giving committee regular updates on how it’s working so far. The fact that we’ve got 50 families out there we’ve been able to help I think is a pretty good indication of how well this is probably going to work. Once we get it fully implemented, we’d be more than happy to provide committee with an update on how well it is working. Thank you.

I do, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to present the 2013-14 Main Estimates for the NWT Housing Corporation. The main estimates propose a budget of $112.782 million, a decrease of 0.4 percent from the 2012-13 Main Estimates. The budget includes a contribution of $67.492 million from the GNWT for 2013-14.

As Members are aware, one of the five priorities identified by the 17th Legislative Assembly was to address housing needs. Housing is a complex issue in many of our communities. There are significant differences in housing needs and challenges between our market and non-market communities, and there...

We’re just doing the interviews right now, so we’re hoping to have our homelessness coordinator on soon. As far as having a bigger budget for next year, we have to go through the budget planning cycle. We have to work with committee, and if there are opportunities there to put a little more money in this, it would have to be one that’s made with the agreement of committee and Cabinet. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to return to item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery.

---Unanimous consent granted

I’ll thank the Member very much for his comments, Mr. Chair.