Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m glad the Member raised that because it is an issue that I’ve been dealing with on a number of occasions too. We follow the National Occupancy Standards and that’s something that we’re evaluating to see where we’re at with that. In many cases we get people who are approved for a home but there’s only a two-bedroom home available. They say they may be under-housed or over-housed so they’re not able to access that unit, or there may be a three-bedroom and according to National Occupancy Standards they can only qualify for a two-bedroom.

We have to look at what works...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate some of the positive comments from Members regarding housing, but Members also pointed out there’s still some work that needs to be done as far as housing goes, and we recognize that and we’re continuing to work on that. I’m sure we’ll have more questions when we get into detail.

Just to very quickly speak to some of the issues that were raised by a few of the Members. I believe Mr. Bromley had asked yesterday about the energy and the $700,000. It’s going to support 14 projects; it’s going to impact about 250 units. So I’m sure they’ll have more questions when...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The house in Inuvik is complete. It is occupied right now and we’re starting to monitor it. We’re going to monitor it starting this June for a full season, because they just moved in I believe it was in the fall time. So it is occupied and I haven’t had a chance to go in there yet and have a look at it, but I’m looking forward to seeing the numbers that come out of that because it was a very expensive project, I might add.

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is one that we’ve had some struggles with in the last couple years. It’s also one that we’ve actually made some progress on. We’ve worked with some of the communities that are sitting on IAB lands and we’ve had some band council resolutions and it’s kind of complicated. I mean, we’re working on one right now that’s been going on for awhile. The community group has agreed to a request. We’ve brought the situation forward to Ottawa and we’re still waiting to hear back from Ottawa on our request. So on IAB lands, because land tenures are an important part of our...

Thank you. It’s an unfair comment to say that this corporation has no respect for our seniors, when you look at all the programs we’ve offered over the years to work with our seniors, help with our seniors. It’s an unfair comment to say the Minister has no respect for seniors because he did not go and consult with all the seniors across the Northwest Territories.

I’ve said before the answer is going to be no if you ask them. We rolled this out publicly a few months ago. So they’ve had opportunities to know that this was coming and it’s a question of fairness and trying to treat all tenants...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The first step is we want to staff that position and then do an evaluation of the work they’re going to be doing. We have two different programs right now. So one of the first duties of the new homelessness coordinator will be to do an evaluation of programs and see how we can enhance them or make some changes that might be fairly effective. We’re committed to coming back in the fall when we go through the business plans and share that with committee. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We’re now in the process of communicating all of this to public housing tenants. I know across the Territories they are starting to let the tenants know what their rent could potentially be. As far as visiting these exact 70 or 50, I’m not sure if they’ve made it there yet, but the plan is to try and notify all public housing tenants across the Northwest Territories what their potential rent change could be. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am sure we appreciate the comments of a lot of the Members. Obviously, the issues are the same right across the Territories, because we have heard the same issues from practically every Member.

We appreciate some of the positive comments we have had surrounding the youth funding and the sports and recreation. That is always a good thing. We will continue to invest in our youth. That was a huge priority of the 16th Assembly. I think we have seen that in a lot of the money making it into the mains. We saw this as a huge priority of the 17th Assembly. We are looking...

In my response to Mr. Bromley, I said it was something we were willing to explore. There have been some projects in some communities where we allowed them to do that. We have to be very careful that when the Member talks about the grounds, to make sure he means grounds of a person’s particular unit. It would be awfully hard to tell somebody to clean up your own yard and we’ll adjust some of your arrears. It’s something we need to explore is what I’m trying to say.

I’ve committed to Member Bromley that it’s something on the Housing Corporation’s radar. I know in a couple of communities they have...