Robert C. McLeod

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

The Member makes a good point and it’s one that we’ve had discussions about as a corporation, the fact that it does cost more to do business in some of the higher arctic communities than it does in some of the South Slave communities.

We are looking at it. The Member referencing the $3,000, that would be the Preventative Maintenance Program. The CARE program actually has a maximum of $92,000 that folks can access to do repairs on their home. But the Preventative Maintenance Program is one that is designed and a lot of seniors take us up on that, for some maintenance on their homes. We are...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have with me to my right Mr. David Stewart, president and CEO of the NWT Housing Corporation; and to my left I have Mr. Jeff Anderson, vice-president of finance and infrastructure, NWT Housing Corporation.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to present the 2012-13 Main Estimates for the NWT Housing Corporation. The main estimates propose a budget of $113.209 million, an increase of 0.3 percent from the 2011-2012 Main Estimates.

The budget includes a contribution of $65.458 million from the GNWT for 2012-2013. As Members are aware, one of the five priorities identified by the 17th Legislative Assembly was to address housing needs. Housing is a complex issue in many of our communities. There are significant differences in housing needs and challenges between our market and non-market communities...

We’re quite proud of the fact that in some of our small communities a lot of the work that is done on public housing units is from people within the community. As far as assisting, I mean, there are opportunities there to assist people that need to repair their own homes. Obviously, there is going to be a cost to it, because it’s not part of our mandate. It is home ownership and homeowners are responsible for all maintenance of their unit. However, we do have a lot of programs that are designed to assist homeowners wanting to do some repairs on their units. The option is there but it’s not one...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The CARE program has been in existence for awhile. There are opportunities for those that are in need of repairs to access the program. The CARE program, as it sits right now, is fairly sufficient and people are given a lot of opportunity to apply for the program. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, on Saturday it was a very special day for a graduating class of Samuel Hearne Secondary School. Every year we have graduation ceremonies all across the Northwest Territories, but what makes this one extra special is it is the final graduation class of Samuel Hearne Secondary School, which is slated for demolition later on this summer.

Of the two schools we have in Inuvik, SAMS, was built, I believe, around 1959, and Samuel Hearne was about 1967. They are a significant part of the history of Inuvik. As a kid going to SAM School, which only went up to Grade 6, you couldn’t wait to...

The Housing Corporation works very hard to try to get people into units. However, we have to make sure that these folks are able to maintain the units and we’re not setting them up for failure. We are working that particular situation. I know we’ve tried to make some contact and I’ll have conversations with the Member about that. We work very hard to get tenants into a lot of these units, the ones that have been vacant for awhile. We don’t want any more vacant units. We’ve managed to turn a lot of them into public housing units just so we can get them occupied. It is still a bit of a challenge...

I appreciate the Member telling me how many vacant units are in the Sahtu. We had a very aggressive vacant unit strategy a few years ago because of the investment that was made by the federal government. We had 135 units. We’re happy to say those are all full. We have a few new units that are going up. There may be a couple vacant in each community, but what we’re planning on doing is we’re hoping to get more and more people into those units as they qualify for some of our programs. We’ll move them in there. Compared to the situation of a couple of years ago, I think we’re down to very few...