Robert C. McLeod

Again, it’s the will of the community. If the community is serious about potential relocation, then we would have to look at identifying some resources to start the planning and working with the community on a possible relocation.

Support from the community is the key word here. We would like to see the community committed to this through a formal motion or possible plebiscite, because moving a community will have an effect, especially on the elders who are used to living there and have lived there their entire lives. We would have to have community support to consider it.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. We’re pleased to have today up in the gallery the president of the Special Olympics NWT, Jane Arychuk. We also have Cappy Elkin, a board member of Special Olympics NWT, Mr. Larry Elkin and Ms. Lynn Elkin. We also had Barb Kardash up in the gallery along with our very special guest Kelton Broome, an athlete for Northwest Territories, who probably had to head back off to school or go training for the next Olympics. Welcome to the gallery. Keep up the good work.

In a lot of the communities they do have the capacity to construct units. We’ve seen that in a number of occasions in the past. We have a lot of our units constructed by local contractors that have the training and knowledge how to build a house. Although there are some challenges in some places, I don’t think that’s primarily one of them.

We do take into consideration the fact that these communities don’t have a private market. The core need income threshold might be a little higher in their community. If you look at the overall percentage of our home ownership programs, they are delivered to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my discussions with the Member I did say that I was going to look at these vacant units, because I know that we have a number of vacant units across the Northwest Territories and we tried to get as many clients as we could into them. Those clients we couldn’t get into them, we converted a lot of these over to public housing. I will commit to the Member that I need to follow up on the number of vacant units that are on there.

He raises the point of income, and that’s one that we’ve had discussions about as a corporation. We tried a GAP program a couple of years ago...

Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons Housing has been able to implement a lot of these new programs is because we listened to the rent scale review or the…(inaudible)…policy review to a lot of the suggestions that were made out there. This is one that I will commit to the Member that I will go and have discussions with the corporation, because the Member raises a good point about returning back to the community if you are a resident to that community.

Again, those communities with the LHOs are usually set by the LHO. If they have vacant units, I am sure they may look at special situations such as...

Before all these rents went into place, there was a lot of discussion between the LHO tenant relations officer and the clients to explain the situation. We can have staff go in there again. I have tried a couple of times to travel with the Member into the Sahtu, and I would be willing to go possibly again into the Sahtu after Christmas or after the New Year. But my preference would be to have staff, who know a lot more about how rent is being calculated, explain to the residents of Deline and the Sahtu, and I would be present, too, if things work out the way they should. Thank you, Mr. Speaker...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. During the consultations across the Northwest Territories on the rent policy review, one of the things that we heard from people was they wanted a system that was fair, more predictable and simple. That’s why we had gone from 421 different rental assessments down to 22. We responded to those concerns. Some of the items that the Member mentioned, the EI payments especially, well, EI payments are usually to provide for the basic necessities of life; food and shelter being two of them, and clothing.

Mr. Speaker, today is National Be a Fan Day, and you will note many of the Members wearing red laces in support of Special Olympics NWT.

I can assure Members of this House that we try having a little bit of flexibility in some of these cases. We do, obviously, I mean we all know that we need some rules, otherwise we’d have just anybody in those units and we may set up a lot of people for failure, which has happened in the past.

As far as the vacant units go, Members of the 16th Assembly will recall that we had 137 vacant units across the Northwest Territories. We had a number in Fort Resolution, we had a number in Gameti. We’ve had a fairly aggressive program in trying to fill them.

We’ve updated Members at the end of the 16th...