Robert C. McLeod

Both rental arrears and mortgage arrears are about $13 million, so we’re looking at $26 million total. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Land tenure does sometimes get to be a hindrance as to people’s ability to access some of our programs. However, we’ve been very fortunate lately that we’ve been working with a lot of the band communities and they’re making band land available to their constituents so that they’re able to access the home ownership programs, which helps the Housing Corporation quite a bit, but more importantly, it helps the residents of the community quite a bit because they will be assured they have land tenure and they’re able to put their house on it.

As far as Commissioner’s land goes...

We do what we can to try and accommodate our seniors in any way possible. The Preventive Maintenance Program -- when I was responding to Mr. Krutko -- when the opportunity arises, we’ll use folks from the community. It will be a Preventive Maintenance Program and it will be a contract that we would work out for certain types of work. We would have to make sure that the seniors are well aware of that. We try to -- and I think I committed to Mr. Beaulieu during question period at one time -- work with some of the seniors in their first language. We’d be able to so they understand exactly what...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is correct; if we were to take this all on, it would cost the Government of the Northwest Territories a lot of money and obviously we are concerned with the declining funding. We have been trying to engage the federal government in sitting down with all jurisdictions in Canada to find ways where we could convince them that this is a program, the CMHC funding obviously is something that we seriously need otherwise all jurisdictions are going to have to start dipping into their own funds. This is one that I think that we need to continue to be very aggressive...

Mr. Speaker, that would be the goal of the department, too, is to ensure that all local firefighters are well trained and the fire marshal and assistant fire marshal would be able to go through the equipment with them and do a checks and balance of all the equipment they have, to make sure things are working properly. It is our goal to ensure that we work with the communities as best we can to ensure that their fire departments are properly trained. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In 2010-2011, and I’ve used this figure a couple of times, we lost $676,000. In 2011-2012, this upcoming year, we’re looking at $754,895 that we won’t be getting from CMHC. I think cumulative to date we are about $11 million that we’ve declined from CMHC and that’s from 1997-1998 up until now.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member makes a very good point and it’s a concern we’ve heard from a lot of small communities in the Northwest Territories. Recognizing that, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs -- and I think we’re going to be debating it when our budget comes forward -- have identified funding to start a training process, because we see our responsibility as being able to get out there at the regional level, have regional training workshops, get into the communities, work with the firefighters in the communities in identifying their needs and their shortcomings as...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is correct; that is the money for the shelter policy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We recognize as well as the Member that the biggest need percentage-wise obviously is in some of the smaller communities. So we recognize that and we try to tailor our infrastructure plan to that. We continue to try to adjust this on an ongoing basis and we continue to work with the other departments. So I think we’re finding ways that we can incorporate the needs survey into how we allocate units and it’s something I think we’ll continue to do in the future. We have to, I mean, we hear it as well as most people that, especially from the MLAs and I think we heard the...

Mr. Speaker, after the March 31st deadline, the Advisory Committee will review all the input that is received from across the Northwest Territories. They will then come up with a set of regulations. As far as the time frame, I am not even sure the exact date when I would be getting it in my office, but I do know shortly after the March 31st deadline the Safety Advisory Committee will be meeting to review all the input that they have had from across the Northwest Territories and putting together their final product and then it will reach my office. Thank you very much.