Robert C. McLeod

We all know that the carbon monoxide issue is a big one the last little while and we are doing what we can to deal with it. The Housing Corporation, their part is to make sure all of our units, all 2,400 units have working CO detectors, and through the fire marshal’s office and the Fire Chief Association of the NWT, we’re creating a public awareness program to ensure that all our residents understand the importance of having carbon monoxide detectors. Again, through the fire marshal’s office, we would work with communities to make sure they are compliant with the new code. Thank you.

We will provide the list of collection rates by community for across the Northwest Territories. That way the Members that have the ones with the lower collection rates can go and encourage them to start living up to their responsibilities. The communities have been responding pretty good.

As far as the LHOs go, we have seven that have a small deficit, it’s probably our lowest number in the last six years. So they’re doing quite well. The ones that we find that we were running into some situations with, we worked very closely with them to try and get everything worked out. So it’s a work in...

Mr. Chair, as part of our renovations when we do major retrofits, if they have an electric hot water heater, we will replace them with oil-fired. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The fire marshal’s office would usually review the plan and they would all have to be code compliant as far as the actual inspection. If they are private dwellings built in communities, if they have a municipal enforcement officer, a building plans officer, I’m sure he would inspect them. In the case of the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, all of our units are inspected by our projects people. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Chair, it is a very consistent question for representatives from Tsiigehtchic and the Member for Mackenzie Delta. We have been waiting on the leadership in Tsiigehtchic to come to us and send us a letter saying they want to form a board. As far as I know, we haven’t received that yet. This has been an ongoing issue for two or three years now. They have a desire to form a board. We may need to get our district folks to follow up with them to see if a letter is forthcoming.

I apologize; January 1, 2013, the assets system was implemented.

To the Member’s second question, we work closely with our LHOs, obviously. They would have a pretty good indication of how much a unit is actually costing them to maintain with utilities and everything, so they would put those units forward for major retrofits. So there’s a lot of thought that goes in there, and some of the quickest payback, and we rely heavily on the information we get from the LHOs. Thank you.

We don’t check with them regularly, but I can commit to the Members that we will start following up with not only the YWCA, we have 23 LHOs out there. We can follow up with them on what their waiting lists are like. We have a number of communities without LHOs that we have public housing stock in. We can check with them and see what their waiting lists are like. That way we will have a whole territory-wide indication of what the waiting lists are like across the territory. We will follow up with the Y and see what their waiting lists are like. I can commit to Members that we will check in with...

Absolutely, we would like to hear from consumers out there. We do know that some consumers have some issues with some of the services they are getting. I think we have to recognize, too, that with the cell phone service capabilities in the Northwest Territories expanding, then there is going to be a need to have a look at something. We’re not quite sure what it is yet, but I can assure the Member that we are working on this issue and we will come up with something that protects consumers across the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec currently legislate contract requirements for cellular phones and so we follow that quite closely. I do know that CRTC does regulate the telecommunications in the country and they have initiated a consultation process to see if the telecommunications sector is getting to the point where they may need some intervention from the commission. Thank you.

Other than trying to wear public awareness and that, I suppose we would have to look at trying to work out some regulations. I do note that if they are renovating a home that was built prior to 2008, then the new requirements would take place where they need to install a CO2 detector. If renovations are being done, then it would be mandatory to install CO2 detectors.

Again, I can assure all Members that we will do whatever we can to ensure all members of the public are aware of the dangers of carbon monoxide and work with the public in any way that we can. If it means handing out CO2 detectors...