Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. These 15 positions you see in Yellowknife support the community… The positions the Member is talking about are in the regional offices, and that is our biggest allocation of our employees, is in the regional ops. But the 15 here support the folks in the regional offices. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I think the office has proven in the past that they do support negotiated contracts. There is an opportunity for contractors to build up their capacity. I do know that within the past four or five years there have been nine or 10 negotiated contracts in the region. That is allowing a lot of the small-town contractors to build up their capacity. They do support negotiated contracts. They have let negotiated contracts. Thank you.

That was a very good example of the work they did in Tsiigehtchic and it’s something that we should promote as the Housing Corp, and even as the government, to encourage a lot of our folks in the communities to come up with innovative ways to deal with the arrears. I mean, there are productive choices that they’re supposed to go through income support. That would be another good opportunity. It’s something that I will commit to this House that as a corporation we’ll try to work with our LHOs to see if we can find other thinking outside the box ideas where we can assist the tenants and not only...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We haven’t rolled out any funding in 2010-11, but overall we use this for such things as utilidor repairs or we’ve used it in the past for water reservoir refill, some repairs on community centres and land slide repairs. As far as this year, we haven’t rolled out any funding yet. Thank you.

My answer would be the same as it was before. We would communicate with these folks and we would talk to them. As far as the motivating factor, maybe the Member needs to go out and speak to some tenants of public housing and ask them what their motivating factor is, but I know as a corporation our motivating factor is to keep our costs down and work with the tenants and keep their costs down. Thank you.

You can inform the hamlet that if they need any assistance with the application funding, to contact the regional office. We have been able to assist them accessing some of the JEPP money that was out there that they were able to utilize. We’d be more than willing to assist the community. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I will get Mr. Anderson to respond to that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do have a manager in there and we do have a maintenance person, but they don’t have an LHO board. That’s been a question that’s been asked to me by some of the leadership of Tsiigehtchic. My answer to them was as soon as they write us a letter saying that they want to form an LHO and form a board. I think the last time was at the regional leaders meeting in Inuvik and I mentioned that to the chief in response to his question, and at the Gwich’in leadership meeting I responded to one of the councillor’s question with the same answer. We’re waiting to hear from them. We...

We don’t have that information right now. We’ll get it and relay it onto the Member. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, we will consult with all affected Aboriginal groups where required to do so. Thank you.