Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve been working hard with the residents of the Paulatuk Housing Authority to try to keep them in their units. There are a few examples of tenancies that began five years ago where arrears started accumulating almost immediately. Twenty letters were sent out. Agreements to pay were signed in 2009 that were never honoured. Of 39 that were signed, only one has been honoured. So we’ve been working hard with the community of Paulatuk to try to keep them in their units. In a lot of cases they don’t communicate with the LHO, and that’s part of the problem. Thank you.

We look for every opportunity that we can work with the communities. I know of a few communities where the local LHO will do a lot of their own maintenance and improvement work over the summer. In some cases they’ll bring as many as 17 people on board to do the summer work. They also hire a lot of students to work at the LHOs for the summer.

As far as the employment goes, we have to be very careful that these folks, that if they do enter into some kind of agreement with them, we have to be sure that they qualify or are able to do a fairly good job, because we don’t want anyone just going into a...

Again, communities that do their budget, they will budget if they want to bring on a full-time fire chief or whatever other staff they want to hire in the community. As I assured the Member, we are always working with communities, LGANT, and NWTAC just to see how we can improve services that we provide to the community. Again, the whole O and M funding process will be reviewed to see, working with all these different groups, if any changes need to be made. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we have a few communities that have full-time fire chiefs and they’re paid for by the municipality. Again, as far as them taking up some of the duties or doing some of the work that would normally be done by the assistant fire marshal, once we do the review of the O and M if we find that there’s some merit to that, then I’m sure it’s a situation that the department will have a look at. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to speak about the importance of community training and preparedness.

In June the town of Fort Smith was threatened by extreme fire conditions which resulted in heavy smoke and considerable risk to the community. Several residents were evacuated until the risk passed. In July forest fires located close to the charter community of Deline resulted in the evacuation of 108 residents. Both events required emergency management officials to implement measures designed to protect the safety of residents and prepare for the worst.

Thankfully these events did...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, that Bill 19, Cost of Credit Disclosure Act, be read for the third time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It’s not a question of how many jobs are in the community, but in some of the communities where people are working, they’re paying their fair share of rent and that’s understandable. But if you look at how the Housing Corporation operates, adjustments are made. If you’re not employed, you pay $32 a month. If it costs $2,000 a month to maintain the unit, the other $1,968 is subsidized by taxpayers in the NWT. We have 67 percent of 2,400 public housing clients in the Northwest Territories paying $32 or less; we have 798 clients across the Northwest Territories paying zero. So we work with the...

We have done a lot of reassessments all across the Northwest Territories. I think there’s still one community that we have to work on. But I can assure the Member that a lot of the arrears that were accumulated during the transfer have now been adjusted and there’s been quite an adjustment.

Again, this is causing the LHO, it’s affecting their ability to do their job, too, or pay their bills without collecting any kind of revenue. A perfect example is a recent $660,000 bill that they had with the Hamlet of Paulatuk that they had difficulty paying because they just weren’t generating any type of...

I’m very well aware of the talents that we have in the small communities, having seen it first hand and knowing that they’re quite capable if you give them an opportunity of performing the work. The training that a lot of these folks have gotten over the past number of years working casual for the local housing authority during the summer is something that’s allowed them to continue to work.

I take the Member’s point, and I can assure the Member that as a corporation we’ll continue to try to work any way we can with the tenants to find ways that they can possibly work off their arrears and that...

We’ve been trying to work very hard with the tenants of Paulatuk housing. We’ve seen quite an improvement in the collection rate in Paulatuk. It’s steadily climbing. The assessments have improved dramatically in Paulatuk. The reassessments that I mentioned to the Member, I think when he asked earlier, have been completed and there’s been a substantial drop in some of the arrears for a lot of the folks in Paulatuk. I know in one particular case alone it’s almost like $100,000 has been removed from their arrears. That’s a significant improvement.

We’ve tried on many occasions to work with them. I...