Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Minister looking into that. I do think there are some very large structural governance issues with the Housing Corporation that will require political restructuring. On that, we have local housing authorities, all of which have boards. There is always the trade-off; the more local control we give to the housing authorities, you know, we get better decisions on the ground, but each of those cost us money to run. We also know they're not exactly the best at collecting rent. Is the Minister planning on looking at the governance structure of the housing...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I will begin with: why does the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation not have a board?

I will convey that information to the city, and I look forward to asking about those discussions. I can tell you the reason that the City of Yellowknife has asked for this is because they find dealing with the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs extremely frustrating. I am happy to finally see the Property Assessment and Taxation Act coming forward. There is a number of unique things that we can do in Yellowknife, whether it be municipal bonds, local services, vacancy taxes, that simply just would not make sense in the smaller communities and may not even make sense in the other tax...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I previously asked questions to the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs regarding a Yellowknife city charter. I was hoping that the Minister responsible could outline a process and provide that document to the City of Yellowknife on what a path forward for a Yellowknife city charter could look like.

I appreciate that answer. The importance here is that carbon offset pools are increasingly becoming a more and more common, larger pool of money to tap into. The federal government is looking at setting up a credit scheme nation-wide, and I don't want the Northwest Territories to be left behind. One of my concerns with this is that it's not really built into our energy strategy or our climate change strategy, so I want to make sure that we look into this properly. Can the Minister work with her counterparts in Infrastructure and ENR and make sure there are some clearer points of accountability...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, I would like to speak about carbon offsets. Firstly, a carbon offset is a credit for greenhouse gas reductions achieved by one party, that can be purchased and used to compensate the emissions of another party. Mr. Speaker, there are a variety of carbon-offset schemes, and some have proved to work better than others. Today, Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak about not just simply buying carbon offsets but the possibility of selling them and using what is an increasingly larger and larger market with billions of dollars to access and fund projects in the North.

The...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a single question in regard to the Transitional Rent Supplement Program. Firstly, I recognize that this wasn't subscribed before, but previous Minister said that it was largely due to lack of advertising. I think when we have to constantly ask the Housing Corporation to put their policies on a website, let alone make an application available online, it's understandable that programs aren't subscribed to. My issue with this line item is that it is actually not correct because this program is sunsetting this fiscal and then we are going to have the Canada Housing...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I look forward to further discussions on this. I've spoken with a number of Indigenous governments who, if the Housing Corporation and the local housing authorities would simply be transferred over to them, and the funding and the units, they would gladly take that on and they would go to CMHC and get better funding than us. I'll continue to talk about this.

I wanted to speak a bit about the cap on units. I know the Minister doesn't like thinking of it as a cap, but that is simply what it is. I've heard a number of numbers; 2,400 units is what I understood are public...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess one of my concerns with the local housing authorities is that in many communities you have the housing authorities, you have the Indigenous government, you have the municipal government; we essentially have three or four voices who you could define as the community. I know we're developing a number of community housing plans, I'm supportive of those. I think the first one we've seen is definitely a step in the right direction. In part of those community housing plans would the Minister be looking at changing governance models? I think there is potential here to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. It's an odd theme of our government that we consistently demand to give us less power, whether it be the Power Corporation being run by boards of the Aurora College getting rid of its board altogether, and now also the Housing Corporation. I guess my problem is, with all due respect, this is not a question for staff; this is a question for the Minister. I mean, her staff is not in a position of whether to change the governance structure. That's only something that can be done at the political level. So my question is: would the Minister be willing to look into...