Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We appreciate all the comments the Members made on the motion that’s before us. Recognizing that there is a concern, this obviously is something that we will be considering during our review of the rent scale.

One thing we have to realize, though, is that lowering it may be a disincentive to some of the higher income earners moving out of public housing and into homeownership. Using the gross at 30 percent, it affects a lot of the lower income earners more than the higher income earners, because the higher income earners have opportunities to put their money into...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That’s always something that we’re willing to listen to. If communities have a desire to take over the provision of delivering public housing, then that’s something, obviously, we’d have to listen to. We’ve had one community that has tried it and realized that it’s a bigger challenge than they realized and it was transferred back to the Housing Corporation. We’re always open to listening to discussions as to the delivery of housing in the communities.

Mr. Chairman, we are just in the process of trying to finalize some of the contractual details. That is one of the challenges we face when we enter into these particular type of contracts. The Member is correct again; there will obviously have to be some carryover into the next fiscal year. Thank you.

Oh, okay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There was some concern that, during the transfer over to ECE, there was a lot of arrears accumulated because people had to go to different places, and in some of the smaller communities they had to fax off their income. This is a discussion that I had with the LHO managers yesterday. There is always an opportunity for tenants to come back to the LHO as they are all starting to come back now, because the LHOs are doing their assessment and verify their income for that particular time.

If they verify their income, then adjustments will be made. So we will see a lot of the...

Mr. Speaker, the Shelter Policy is going to be a component of the overall social policy framework. It will outline our housing responses to specific community-inclined groups. It is going to encompass anything to do with housing. This is what we see as a bit of an operating manual for the future of the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, and how we can best respond to all the concerns that are raised by Members and by the public, and a few of the issues that the Member raised specifically will be ones, obviously, that will be part of the whole overall policy. Thank you.

I have committed and I mentioned earlier that we are planning, in the coming construction season, going out with as many labour-only contracts as possible, especially in some of the smaller communities. When there’s a lot that needs to be developed, there are a lot of contractors within the communities themselves that are able to undertake this work.

One thing that I would be very wary of doing is breaking down the contracts too much. I mean, there’s always going to be a need for a general contractor and then he gets his subcontractors. In most cases, if he’s from a small community he’ll use...

That was part of the discussions with ECE, was the positions. When it was transferred over, I believe the Housing Corporation gave up five or six positions, if I’m not mistaken, as part of the transfer back. I believe we’re getting the five or six positions back with the Housing Corporation.

I will take the Member’s advice and in my discussions with the officials when we’re done this process, we’ll look at making it a condition of the contract where it’s appropriate and where it would help people in the communities. Thank you.

I was just commenting to the official that we put in multi-unit purchase. We should have actually made it a little easier by just putting duplex because that’s exactly what it was. I apologize for that and we’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again.

The fact of the matter is we’re looking for a duplex to purchase. We haven’t identified one yet. This is money that’s earmarked for the possible purchase of a duplex.