Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My oral questions will be directed to the Minister of the Housing Corporation, which I’m sure he’s completely surprised. I will be following up on my Member’s statement as I talked about the affordability issue and adequacy issue in my Member’s statement.

Can the Minister explain what actions are being taken about the affordability challenge in Yellowknife?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I also want to talk about housing in Yellowknife.

According to the 2009 Housing Needs Survey, there are 6,742 households in Yellowknife. While the city is often overlooked in discussions about housing in the NWT, I note that this is where most of the households are located in the North.

It is true Yellowknife housing is different from the housing issues in other NWT communities. The survey identified that 14 percent of Yellowknife households have affordability issues. That means there are 928 households struggling to come up with that 30 percent or more to help...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In short, I will be supporting this motion as it goes forward.

The lack of quality housing is a challenge in the North and when we make it completely unaffordable, the ground is never stable for a family. If you talk to all the housing experts out there, they’ll say that a good, solid home...An unaffordable home is one of the primary problems where problems at home start. They can’t afford to be there and all of a sudden it creates a ripple effect into other issues. It’s just an endless spiral.

I’m not convinced that if we move from 30 percent to 25 percent on the...

I thank the Minister and I will agree that the statistics speak for themselves. It’s a matter of how you put them in order. With 928 households through the housing survey still in need -- and he may want to suggest they have other options -- but with almost a zero percent vacancy rate in Yellowknife, options are few and far between. If the Minister is interested in advice -- and he’s gone through several Members today and it sounds like he’s taking advice today -- I would highlight the fact that one multi-family unit being built in Yellowknife does not address the affordability and suitability...

Clearly a one-size policy doesn’t fit anybody across the North. That approach certainly hasn’t addressed the adequacy issue. As I said in my Member’s statement, 928 people in Yellowknife alone, that’s 928 families alone are paying over 30 percent of their gross income on fixed expenses. I still haven’t heard how the Minister is addressing the affordability challenges in Yellowknife.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I was getting ready for the House today, I was walking down and I saw a man dressed in black and at first I thought was that Johnny Cash, but it turned out to be our wonderful Mr. Whitford. Noticing that he was in black, I was wondering if the Clerks Table was afraid he was going to take them up on the Honourary Clerk of the Table role, but he’s dressed finely in his captain’s uniform.

Mr. Speaker, lastly, I’d like to recognize the Mildred Hall Pages who have been serving us quite well here for the last few days. Thank you for their work and I appreciate them here.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For many years the outfitting industry has been significant to our northern economy. It has represented a good balance between tourism and promotion, conservation, economic investment, business and certainly local employment. For decades lodges brought tourists to the North. That was new money to our territorial economy that helped diversify our economy and certainly employ people.

In a market like ours, there was great confidence, and businessmen, women and families alike met that confidence with investment and kept investing in their lodges and in the North.

Now things...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was listening to the questions raised by our Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Jane Groenewegen. I like her approach on suggesting bulk purchasing and trying to leverage the expertise and skills that private industry have. My question would be to the Minister of Health and Social Services just to make sure -- of course, recognizing individual MLAs have every right to advocate for their businesses in their riding -- if the Department of Health and Social Services is going to continue this line of consideration which I would encourage them to do, it would make it an open...

Mr. Speaker, it is great to have initiatives with pittance of a dollar called investment that they referred to, but the reality is the customers aren’t picking that up. What work has the government done to ensure that this has actually taken any effect in this industry or any industry on this so-called market shift?

The problem still remains: the customers are not coming and these outfitters are left with all of these lodges that are difficult to staff. No one wants to work there because they know they can’t make any money. Has the Minister investigated the realities of this so-called bailout...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I talked about our new endangered species, the outfitter, and the fact that they’ve been left not just holding the bag but worthless lodges, because of the direction that the caribou management has taken. Mr. Speaker, many of these lodges have the investment of many people, of generations of money, and are seen as their only opportunity for the future, but that opportunity has been pulled away.

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to ask the Minister of ITI what is this government’s plan to do with these outfitters with these worthless lodges while they cannot...