Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I stated before, this was one-time funding but we have not closed the door on this. This is money of which there’s been an uptake of right now. We’re more than willing in the future if the program continues to be a success and we find that we do need more funding, then we’ll come back to this forum to request the funding.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think the Member said it very well when he first started, when he said the Housing Corporation can’t do everything. That’s a very important comment, especially with the challenges we face right now. We do continue to work with the communities. We’re trying to have community-based decisions. We work with communities with lease commitments. We have communities where we’re leasing space from them. In some communities, a small community might be one building that we’re leasing from them and being rented out. The housing for staff was another one where there was a good...

Mr. Chairman, that is something that we would be willing to look at if the LHOs were willing and able to take on the preventative maintenance part of it. I think that is something that does make sense right now. We do preventative maintenance on the seniors units plus seniors can still qualify for CARE, and many of them have had repairs done through the CARE program. Preventative Maintenance Program is a big one that we have heard some concerns where people coming from out of town have been doing some of the work. This is something that we can discuss with the LHOs and see if they are able to...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To the Member’s point, he talks about the local economic development and the Housing Corporation in partnership with the LHOs are some of the biggest employers in the community whether it’s guys doing maintenance or during the summer you can have up to 16 or 17 people if you’re doing a lot of the M and I work yourself. So we contribute quite a bit in that regard. The local materials, I think I made reference to yesterday, were possible. We’d love to use local materials for construction, however they do have to meet a standard and if those materials were to meet the...

What’s that? I’m sorry, Mr. Chairman. I’m not paying attention. First of all, our intent is to have the assessments transferred in June. Then this is already here, so in the next budget there will be no line item to that effect.

We still want to put the units in the community. Land tenure is a very important issue and we can’t, as the Member actually pointed out as he was speaking, we can’t go to what he said, the day was where Housing...and I don’t think Housing just took anything, but maybe they worked out some agreements with people staying on those particular lands and I think we’re seeing more and more of that today where maybe there was some misinformation or misinterpretation or misunderstanding, but those things can be worked out.

The land tenure is the most important part, because we need to make sure we have...

The Member is correct; these two, the mortgage collection specialists will be part of our operations from this point on.

Thank you. We appreciate those comments. I just wanted to respond saying that we are looking at that right now, is having folks that are looking after their own houses as part of this program. Also, I think that there was a concern with elders and people that didn’t understand that were applying for a program, but there’s an opportunity there for somebody to attend the program on their behalf.

That is correct. We’re looking to make great improvement this year. As I mentioned before, we’re hiring some mortgage collection people. That should help. We’re having more and more people approaching us now to work out repayment plans and the message is getting out there that if you want to qualify for some of the programs, then it’s to your best interest to address your arrears issue and you’re usually able to qualify for some of the programs afterwards. So we are looking forward to a big improvement in the coming year and when the Housing Corporation is before this committee again next year...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Some of the positions are for implementing the Canada Economic Action Plan stimulus money. As we know, there’s more and more projects getting out the door and these are technical folks that we have on the ground to assist with that. Their positions will be lapsing once we’re through with the money, but at this point there was so much money being poured into the communities and into the regions we felt that we needed some extra help just to deal with this money.

The others are mortgage collection specialists. We’ve heard the discussion on arrears and we’re looking for some...