Tom Beaulieu

Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, people in my riding are experiencing serious issues around land tenure. Members from the Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh riding can't buy land, and the current lease structure is a barrier to securing property. A lack of tenure limits residents' ability to obtain mortgage or benefit from government programs like those offered by the NWT Housing Corporation, programs that would make a positive difference in the lives of those people. Instead, land is rented from the Government of the Northwest Territories at 10 per cent of the value per year. Ideally, that would be rent...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also rise in support of the motion put up by Ms. Green and Mr. Nadli. In my riding, we do have persons with physical disabilities. We have persons with, also, invisible disabilities in the community. People with physical disabilities are often housebound all winter because, in the small communities, we don't have the proper accessible vehicles to move people around. We don't have the proper infrastructure on the roads and so on for easy mobility for people, like wheelchairs as an example. For sure, if this is supporting addressing many of those issues that we are...

My question was that there is a program in place now that gives incentives to developers to put market housing units on the ground. The incentives are $25,000 in some regions, and $50,000 in other regions. I'm asking the Minister if she would continue to look at stick-built instead of bringing modular homes -- For that 30 per cent savings for modular homes, provide a subsidy of 30 per cent to private developers and have them stick build units in those communities.

Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have questions for the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation based on her Minister's statement on market housing for community staff. The modular homes are not an acceptable method of delivering market housing in the community where it has been delivered in Tu Nedhe before, in Fort Resolution. I would like to know if the Minister has done any sort of consultation with the communities on modular versus stick-built in the communities. Thank you.

The Minister mentions the land claim organizations and the work that goes on there for those negotiations. I'd like to ask the Minister if he could contact those organizations, not necessarily trying to establish a side table, that is not my responsibility or authority, but just to have the discussion on this issue. This is a serious issue, and if individuals want to move forward to fix their units and so on, as I indicated in here, we need to resolve this issue. I would like to know if the Minister would be prepared to talk about this issue specifically with land claim organizations.

Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member’s statement I discussed rent that is currently being collected on lots in the Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh riding. I’d like to ask the Minister of Lands questions. Would the Minister be willing to consider adjusting the rent currently charged on land to a reasonable amount, especially for seniors and other people on fixed income? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

So I take it that if we don't get any money from Ottawa there will be no changes; that's not too good. Will the Minister take a serious look at the sale of public housing as a reduction in core need in the small communities? Thank you.

I was wondering if the Minister is contemplating collecting additional data in a different way in order to supplement the needs survey for future development of programs.

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to talk about something that is a very important item to the small communities and that is the attendance of students K to 12. Absenteeism is very high in some of our small communities and I would like to recommend to the Minister -- not now, I'm not making a recommendation now, but in the future I recommend that the Department of Education, Culture and Employment start to collect data so that they could determine the level of absenteeism in all of the communities, but specifically in the small communities. We know that if a student misses one day of school per week, that...

When the Minister reaches out to the communities and gets community input on what they see as key in their communities for housing programs, how quickly, after that, then, can the Minister make changes to programs so that communities can take advantage of the programs, say, this coming summer?