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...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Housing is always looking everywhere to see how we can help those folks pay down their arrears. Part of it was allowing people to get into a repayment plan where they pay X amount of dollars. In some cases, one case in particular, a lady paid for five or six years until she managed to pay it all. It was very small amounts she paid each month. But the Member has a point, though, and it was an innovative solution that was reached in Tsiigehtchic. That’s one thing we try to encourage our department and all our folks out in the front line to try to come up with innovative...

Mr. Speaker, I’m sure all the communities come forward and make their case to MACA on the amount of funding that they receive, and if the communities make a good enough argument for funding for a position such as the one the Member is speaking of, I’m sure the department will be more than happy to have a look at it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The funding allocation is to the communities and the communities will decide how to allocate that funding and how to budget for them, and if they feel that they have the adequate funding to budget for a fire chief, which in this case they did, they bring on a full-time fire chief, and I commend them for that. But as far as correlating to extra funding to the community from our department, we have pretty well a set figure. I can advise the Member, though, that we are working on a review of O and M funding for the communities and we’re hoping to have that work done...

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Deh Cho, that Bill 7, Community Planning and Development Act, be read for the third time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

That’s a very good point, because the taxpayers like to see that their tax dollars are well spent. They are trying to provide a service to a lot of people in low-income housing and we need those people to work with us, otherwise it’s never going to work, and this is one of those cases.

We need to find a solution for this. As badly as it’s gotten, maybe part of it is because the LHO did not condition them early enough in the life of the Paulatuk Housing Authority to have to pay rent. If you look at some of our better performing communities, we have communities where they’re collecting 100...

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.

Yes, I would, Mr. Chair.