Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Madam Chair. The number has been fairly consistent for a number of years. We have been fortunate that we’ve had huge federal government investment in our infrastructure and our O and M needs to catch up with that. We need to look at that. As well, every year they get the gas tax money which allows them to do water treatment plants. They have the ability to finance a lot of the projects. We’ve had some communities that have stepped up to the plate, showed some real leadership and went out, financed and managed their whole project, and they’ve come in probably a lot cheaper than we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to take this opportunity to recognize a good friend of mine, Minister Lorne Kusugak from Nunavut, who I’ve had the opportunity to work with over the last number of years and I’ve always been very impressed with his commitment to the people of Nunavut. Welcome to the Assembly, Quasa.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We will work closely with the communities. We have our regional folks out there that will work closely with the communities. We do know that there could be a potential impact on the community of Norman Wells. They’re funded based on what they have right now. In the future when the community expands – and I still think it will – then we would have to review the whole funding as far as Norman Wells goes. If their population goes up, then adjustments will have to be made as to some of their funding. As far as the impact on some of their infrastructure, I mean, that’s a...

As I said before, part of the discussion we have is with LGANT. I mean, they represent – or NWT Association of Communities – all 33 communities. All 33 communities will normally meet in a room and they’re just one big organization. Their big concern was the O and M funding, not so much that we have to be fair and go to a base-plus.

One of the arguments I continue to have with Canada when we meet with them is as the Northwest Territories, if you fund us on a per capita basis, being such a small jurisdiction we’re immediately behind the eight ball. We try to treat all our communities the same by...

As I said before, our goal is to have the Joe Greenland Centre open as soon as possible. If we can get the contract awarded, ideally we’d like to have them in there by the spring. As far as a full-time home care worker, that is out of my jurisdiction and that’s a discussion that the Member will have to take up with the Minister of Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It was our intent to start the renovations to the Joe Greenland Centre on the former side that Health and Social Services used to manage, and we still intend to proceed with those renovations.

We’ve tried every which way to get as many people into these home ownership units as possible. We’ve tried having a 10 percent gap where if they were over the ceiling, then we would consider them. We’ve had some limited success with that. Some people have been turned down for other reasons.

I will commit to the Member that I will follow up on these units and see where they’re at, because I would like to see, as much as the next guy, a lot of people moved out of the public housing spectrum and into home ownership, but we have to ensure that we work very closely with them and make sure that we’re...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We do have vacant units across the Northwest Territories where the public housing stock units are vacant, but those units are being worked on. We have approximately 130, I think, where there’s some major M and I work done. We’ve tried to encourage our LHOs to have this work completed as quickly as possible so we can turn them over and get tenants into them. Unfortunately, sometimes due to lack of capacity, that does become very challenging. A lot of the units are under repair, and once the repairs are completed we will move tenants back in, which should shorten up the...

I can commit to the Member that we’ll look at all infrastructure and ones that may have been damaged by the flood. If they’re municipal-owned infrastructure, obviously insurance would cover those, but as part of the post-mortem I’ll commit to the Member that we’ll look at all aspects of the equipment in the community, and we’ll go from there and see what could be improved to try and alleviate some of the damage for the next time. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments. That’s one of the things that we’ve been most pleased with, is the communities’ ability to do good quality projects and put a good product on the ground.

As far as water treatment plants, I mean, the community, again, has that ability to decide where they want to draw water from if it fits within their fiscal framework and the monies that they’re allocated. They’re the best at knowing where their water sources are from. I do know for a fact that while Inuvik has been using Hidden Lake pretty well since the beginning of Inuvik and they...