Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, just so I understand this clearly, there is no requirement for an individual buying a public housing unit to go to the bank to borrow their share, that their share can actually now be a rent-to-purchase, so the Housing Corporation will come along, say you are a good tenant; you paid rent for the last 20 years without missing rent payments. We are going to sell this house to you. First thing we are going to do is we are going to reduce the cost of the house by 48 per cent. The second thing we are going to do is we are going to take the 52 per cent and we...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I'm just looking for a bit of clarification. I'm going to just indicate what I think PATH is going to try to do.

So when a public housing unit is determined for sale and the tenant in that public housing unit has an opportunity to buy it and the house is valued at $100,000 and the corporation makes a decision to apply PATH, and the person is making under a certain amount so that the tenants get 48 per cent of the cost of the house, so one house worth $100,000 would be $48,000. I'm wondering if that $48,000 is budgeted or if it's just a reduction on what...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, earlier the Minister talked about a user-pay program. I was wondering if that would have any direct impact on the actual rents. It would seem that, at the first look, the power bills are fairly significant across many of our communities, and I was wondering if, once the NWT Housing Corporation moves that cost from their books to the tenant, that tenant will pay less rent according to how much more power they are required to pay. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Regular MLAs are the ones who want to do just that, through increases in the Small Community Employment Support Program.

However, the government wants to try to deliver that program with no changes in the policy, which means they will continue to have problems getting the money out the door. The program is just not deliverable in its current form, Mr. Speaker.

At the end of the day, to truly tackle poverty, we need a well-funded, well-coordinated government-wide approach to guide investments and programs showing the best returns.

We must empower Northerners to take jobs...

Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I move that committee defer further consideration of the estimates for the Department of Infrastructure at this time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

No, that is good for me. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and just as firm as the Minister wants to be on not budging off this and saying that he is not putting any extra money into. This side of the House, it is just as firm also. We are asking the government to put the money in. We are aware of the fiscal situation. We are not going into this blind. We know what we are talking about. This money would go, and then it would be well-used. It will be well-leveraged, and it will have benefits to the government. If we start employing a few more people, it will benefit the government. We are taking people off income support. That is...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to add to what I said earlier, and what Mr. Blake had just said about the Community Access Road Program. When the Members from this side of the House talked about the Small Community Employment Program, we certainly were not thinking that this was going to subsidize a Community Access Road Program; completely different type of projects in our minds. To try to now jam all of the requests that we have for around the various departments into the Small Community Access Support Program, it is not something that we support.

This Access Road Program, we are...

Marci cho, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, committee wishes to consider Tabled Document 261-18(2), Northwest Territories Main Estimates 2017-2018, and we would like to consider the Department of Infrastructure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

What new, not continuing, actions or initiatives have come out of the most recent Anti-Poverty Roundtable?