Robert C. McLeod

I would encourage most people to try to apply even if they don’t think the market is right, because they do have a length of time where they’re able to look for a unit. So if they were to get their application in right away.

Going back to the Member’s original question, though, it is part of the evaluation that we’re looking at and we see there may be some opportunity to maybe come back with a second intake for programs like PATH and that. Thank you.

I have committed to the Member that we’ll have the discussion and I’ll follow up with the officials on a number of other situations like this that we have out there. There’s opportunity to maybe have some discussions with my Cabinet colleagues and see if there are ways we can be a little more accommodating. I will commit to the Member that I’ll undertake that. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, obviously it would be our preference to use as much local labour as possible. Some contracts have been negotiated in the past. In some cases it may have been a project management issue where the project wasn’t done on a timely manner. Unfortunately, that hurts the local development corporation that they may have partnered up with. We continue to look on a case-by-case basis. They come forward, the good case where they may have different project management teams in place, then we would obviously have a look at it.

For those that want training, like the young person that you are...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do get requests for negotiated contracts and we look at a few factors when we determine whether we’re going to follow through with the negotiated contracts. One of them, obviously, is the number of contractors that are in the community. If there are other contractors that have an opportunity to bid on the work if it goes public or if they’ve also submitted a request for a negotiated contract, we look at that. We look at past performance. If we’ve negotiated a contract before and the work and the timeliness of it has not been up to par, then that’s another factor we...

I hear the Member’s comments and I’ve heard those comments before, where you get some concerns from the residents in the NWT where somebody has accessed a program and they seem to continue to access those programs where somebody that needs a lot of assistance is not getting it.

I hear the Member’s concern with people who apply for these units, they did apply for the units and we gave them the units and there was a forgivable portion, especially the old HAP units. I’ve asked the corporation, just talking to the two Jeffs here, and I’ve asked if we can come up with the information on a lot of the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I would.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ve said we’ve used those numbers, especially in some of the communities where the need is highest, we’re hoping to use those numbers to use it as a basis for allocating our resources in the future. I think the report came out last year. So this particular year we’ve tried to gear as many resources to some of the communities in higher need. So we’re hoping to be able to take care of some of the repairs that are going on in the community.

One thing I need to point out, Mr. Chair, is we’ve had homeownership units across the Northwest Territories for the last number of years...

Mr. Speaker, I think Housing goes to great lengths to try and accommodate all our seniors and try to help them out as much as we can. If you look at the public housing portfolio, seniors over 60 don’t pay any rent, so that helps them out quite a bit. We have the Senior Preventative Repair Program. We have the Seniors Repair Program. I have even offered, as we have folks go into the communities, to have someone accompany them that speaks the first language in the community so the seniors are better able to understand some of the programs that we offer. We ask people -- and this would apply to...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We did have quite a spike in the amount. It went up to $8 million and that was as a result of some of the federal investment that we were using. It is down to $5 million. We are trying to refocus some of our resources into the repair side of it because we see that as one of our biggest needs right now. I think our overall infrastructure budget for this year is, like, $28 million. Yes, about $28 million. That’s going back to our historical levels that we’ve had before. So we’re trying to refocus some of our priorities into the CARE side of it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have 15 apprentices within the Housing Corporation and more specifically at the LHO level at this particular time. We do have plans for bringing on 10 more. As for the types of trades that they’re in, we have a fairly extensive list and what I can do is I can get the staff to provide a copy to Members that gives the location and specific trade they’re in. It goes from housing maintenance servicemen, which we find we need a lot in the communities, carpenters, oil burner mechanics, we have a few plumber/oil burner mechanic apprentices. That covers them all. We’ll be...