Robert C. McLeod

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

---Unanimous consent granted.

We’ve heard the argument on a number of occasions about Yellowknife being a magnet community. We do have a lot of folks from outside come into Yellowknife. Yellowknife is very fortunate. They have some very good groups here in town that work on these situations. As far as their transitional housing goes, I think they’re in better shape than all of the 32 communities across the Northwest Territories. We just made a sizable contribution to Betty House and we do help with Rockhill with an in-kind donation, plus some money to help with utilities and that. As far as the rest of the Northwest...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; there was a report done. One of the recommendations that came out of the report, Yellowknife, I think the biggest issue was affordability, and that’s one of the reasons that the Rent Supplement Program came into play.

There is a need for public housing all across the Northwest Territories; Yellowknife and some of the larger centres because they’re market communities, it’s a little harder to get more public housing in there. We do have 311 public housing units in Yellowknife. I think there are 169 of our own, plus we have some lease units, as we do...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize a good constituent of Inuvik Twin Lakes, Mr. Willard Hagen.

I would be glad to visit the Member’s constituency and talk to some of the NGOs there, as I would extend that invitation to all Members here, because it helps us as a corporation to do our job better with some planning, so we can hear from folks out in the communities who have to deal with some of the situations they find themselves in. I will commit to the Member, if we can line up a meeting, I’d be happy to attend. Thank you.

Because of our limited infrastructure budget, we were fortunate. In the last two years we’ve had a huge investment from the federal government. But we’re back to our original number of $17 million. A lot of it’s for public housing replacement units. I can assure the Member that Yellowknife’s very high on the priority. I believe there are about 61 units that may have been built or started in 2012-13, and my understanding is Yellowknife was probably getting about 23 of these units. In some cases we buy units that we can convert into public housing instead of building. That way we get more value...

I’ll have discussion with the officials and when we’re able to, we’ll be more than happy to sit down with committee and share some of the information, all of the information, not some of it, that we have gathered with committee and get some feedback from committee as to how we can best move forward.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I take responsibility for that. I should have passed the information on to the Finance Minister. The New Deal review was completed and it’s a review that was taken on by Municipal and Community Affairs to assess how well these programs have been working in the community and some of the potential changes that might come about. The review of the New Deal is completed and was done by MACA.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The numbers have been staying pretty consistent for the last number of years. A review had been completed. Part of the review was having some dialogue with the NWTAC and LGANT, Local Government Administrators of the Northwest Territories. They’re more concerned with the O and M funding and their big concern was the O and M funding. So we’re trying to address that. But as far as the infrastructure funding, they didn’t have too much concern with the amount of money that’s been going in there. I mean, understanding that there’s been a huge investment in infrastructure in...

As I said before, it’s our intent to put a call out for tender and get the work started on the Joe Greenland Centre. I’d have to do a follow-up and see exactly where it’s at now and I will communicate that to the Member.