Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are 10 that are completed, 13 bringing them to their councils for approval in February, and the balance -- I believe it’s 13 and 10, I may have the numbers backwards -- will have them to their councils for approval in March. We anticipate that all communities will meet the deadline. In the event that they don’t, their funds will be held back until they have their plans completed and approved.

I’m not going to be able to provide the Member with the names of these 19 tenants. I can provide some of the regions that they’re in, but as far as names go with the information and everything, we have to be careful. We have to understand that maximum rent in the communities could be as high as $2,300, but that doesn’t mean that somebody who has a job is going to pay the $2,300. It’s based on the income that they’re making. I will commit to the Member that I’ll get him some information and sit down with him.

First of all I have to clarify. I said fiscal year, but it was the upcoming fiscal year and not the end of this particular fiscal year. So the 2010-2011 fiscal year. I apologize for that.

It is a concern that we have heard far and wide, is the rent people are being charged once they’ve gained employment. We always want to make sure that if we’re housing people, we try and work out the Homeownership Program so a lot of these people can graduate into the Homeownership Program. Housing tries very hard to make sure all the tenants are adequately housed and, with the review of the rent scale, we’re...

Mr. Speaker, we’ll look into it right away. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we haven’t had any concerns brought to our attention yet by the consumers, but we do have a consumer affairs person that monitors a lot of the goings-on out there. If this continues to be a practice or something that consumers need information on or just need reassurance that they are protected, then it’s something that, as a government, we have to do. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we’ll continue to work with the communities in identifying their energy needs and where they can make improvements so when the community decides what infrastructure that they’re going to build, then they’ll be able to incorporate a lot of the ideas. That’s why the Arctic Energy Alliance is playing a part in working with some of the communities in coming up with their community energy plans. So this would go a long way, and I’ve spoken to one community in particular that had some concerns about some of the energy costs and how they were doing some new work and they were going to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, this funding is provided to community governments when two factors are in place. One, the community government is unable to provide for unanticipated expenditures from within its budget without a significant negative impact on community government operations and, two, where the community government can demonstrate that it could not have fiscally planned for the unanticipated event. Thank you.

In response to the Member’s first question, this is a new line item that we’re proposing to put in this year’s budget. I suppose further down the road if we’re finding that this not a sufficient amount, then it’s something that we’d have to bring before this forum to seek an increase. At this moment we’re quite comfortable with the $650,000 and it’s something that we’d have to have a look at one or two years down the road.

As far as the Seniors Games, we do like to try and support seniors, but our main priority is with the youth. We’d like to work with seniors, but we’d look more at a regional...

Mr. Speaker, these are the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation programs so we stay away from using the LHOs. They have their own process that they have to deal with as far as rentals go. So as of right now there are, basically, a couple of options: they could speak to the district manager and then, as we’ve seen in many cases, a lot of them are speaking to the MLAs and that’s being relayed to the Minister. We do try and follow up with all the inquiries we get and see in each particular case what the situation was, what was the reason it was turned down. Until we get the new official...

Mr. Chair, we still continue to work closely with the communities. The people at the regional office are usually their first point of contact and they should be able to provide them with all the information they get. I know in some cases copies of particular reports were provided to the regional office, to the communities, but there’s still the first point of contact and they’re working closely with the communities. If they need more information as to what went on in the past, then they’d normally contact community operations in headquarters and they’d be able to provide them with that...