Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’ve heard the concern about the waiting list in Yellowknife. I know some of the communities have waiting lists, not quite as large as here. We are planning on doing some work. After we had our briefing the other day, we went back and I was thinking about some of the people who were on a waiting list and I do know that if the requirement, I believe, for some of them that are accessing income support or having income support pay their rent in place they are living now, I think the requirement is to be on the waiting list of the local LHO. So we were planning on doing –...

Mr. Chair, maybe it was a slip on our part, because I know we were providing committee with an update on what we had planned to do, but the Member is correct; there were really no numbers attached to that. I can commit to the Member and Regular Members that we will put this information together. We will put some dollar figures to it, and then we’ll sit down with committee and they’ll have a better idea of exactly what we do plan on doing and how much, at the end of the day, that we’re thinking is going to save us.

I know we have sat with committee and said we are trying to reduce our public...

A lot of the programs, and most of the ones that were approved, were applications that we had received from these groups and we reviewed all the applications and disbursed the funding. We work with them and will probably get an application in. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To my right I have Mr. David Stewart, president of Northwest Territories Housing Corporation. To my left I have Mr. Jeff Anderson, vice-president of financial and infrastructure services with the NWT Housing Corporation.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. If you recall in the past, we did put a lot of HELP units on the ground. A lot of these HELP units in the communities were vacant because we didn’t have clients for them. I think we built a lot of them on specs that we were going to get the clients and it didn’t work out the way we had hoped, so our plan now is to… First of all, we’re not getting as many applications and clients approved as we would like, so we’ve turned a lot of these units into public housing and we’ve turned some into staff housing, we’ve rented them out wherever we can. So we realize that we may need...

I do, Mr. Chair.

It was implemented September 1st and our goal was to go to 175 and we’re going to phase them in. I think we’ve got 50 this year. Thank you.

I’m going to rise in this House and let them know we are going to look after their best interest. We are having a lot more concern with lots of consumer affairs issues out in the public. Our consumer affairs department, though it may be a small office, works very hard to ensure that the residents across the Northwest Territories are protected. So I can assure residents across the Northwest Territories that we will do what we can to protect their interest, and with the ever-expanding cell phone market in the Northwest Territories, I think that warrants serious consideration. Thank you, Mr...

Our citizens in the North matter all the time and we do whatever we can to protect their best interest. MACA is of the view that we will wait until CRTC completes their consultations to see if the next steps we take is any introduction to any kind of legislation. I think before then would be premature. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We appreciate the Member’s support and look forward to working with all Members to try and raise awareness out there. I think the event that took place in Whitehorse, unfortunately, was a sad way to make the public aware of the danger to carbon monoxide detectors. I do know our NWT Fire Chiefs Association is working very hard on this issue because they recognize the importance of it too. I think, in partnership with all the stakeholders, we’re doing all we can to make sure our public is well protected.