Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The waiting list now, I think the Member quoted 149, it’s down to 109 currently. It’s down to 109. So some people have been accommodated. We do have a lot of lease commitments in the city. The public housing units, this is basically what we have now. Other than putting new houses on the ground or finding some new lease commitments this is going to be an issue. There’s a waiting list for pretty well all of the communities. This is one that we need to address and if it means... I think the city has new public housing units coming this year, so there will be some new...

We are working with MACA on a land development strategy, but we have made significant progress in the last little while. Communities where there was some land tied up are starting to make more and more land available to the Housing Corp, because they realize too that it’s beneficial to them. We’ve seen a couple of good examples of that. If that partnership continues to flourish then I think we’re going to see that we’ll be able to have more and more access to land. As the Member knows, there’s lots of band land in some of the communities. That’s an ongoing process and it’s one that we’re quite...

Mr. Chairman, we are aware of that. There have been some concerns with that. We have taken some steps to address that. Some of it is we send the list out there. We know everything that is needed for a particular project. Sometimes some of it doesn’t make it to the community. The folks that are responsible for that project will usually do a check. If there are pieces that are missing, they will then advise the supplier and they would have to make sure that the piece is there. It is something that I have heard about. It is not a huge issue as much as it used to be. Still, we were supposed to be...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We will take committee’s advice and input when we’re developing the strategy. We need to make sure that when the money is declining, we’re able to meet the challenge. We do continue to support local development. I know from experience that there were times where the Housing Corporation would make a commitment to buy materials from local producers and distribute them to the LHOs, and unfortunately these products didn’t quite measure up and there were issues with that. But we’re always looking for ways that we can continue to support and we’ll make it part of our...

We’re looking to sit down with committee as soon as possible. I think the offer has been made to discuss some of the community needs survey numbers. I’ve also offered to sit with committee and get their feedback on some of what they’d like to see for the Housing Corporation. We’re hoping, our intent is, this infrastructure budget, this is one that we’re passing today, the budget that we bring forward next year I think will reflect the community needs survey and where we need to put what units. Obviously we’ll be seeking input from committee on that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, a couple years ago we had an issue where we were looking for material supply, and it was a tender that was for the whole Northwest Territories. So we had some concerns from some of the district providers, so that was changed and they broke it out into districts so the districts would be able to provide quotes on it.

The supply, ship and erect, it is a concern to some of the smaller operators. The ones I know have the capacity to deal with it, but there are some that are just comfortable doing the labour part of it only because they don’t want to have the...

These positions will be in the Executive headquarters and they will be supporting the work of the regions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No, that number is going to stay the same. What we’re hoping to do with the transfer is the money is still with ECE. We’re hoping or our intent is to come through with a supp request in the May session.

This was part of developing a local market where people in the communities become homeowners. So if there’s a deal that can be worked out between two homeowners, because you have people that would receive the unit when they had a fairly large family and then they’ve all moved out so there’s opportunity there. If a person owns their own home in the community and they realize that it may have gotten too small for them, if they’ve done all their forgivable part or if they’ve paid everything up, then there’s an opportunity for them if there’s a market there -- in some cases there is -- to sell...

Hopefully we’ll be around in 2038 to see it, well, not hit zero. I’m thinking, as I said before, part of our strategy is the design of our homes going to the more multi-unit-type homes. I think we may come to a point where we may have to make some hard decisions on how we provide houses. Are we a public housing provider? The homeownership, we’ll have to see that. The bottom line is we’d still like to secure funding from Canada for the operation and maintenance and we’ll continue to lobby them for that part. But I think it’s going to come to a point where maybe it’s a question of asking the...