Robert Hawkins

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. A flexible transition period really makes sense and I’ll tell you why. It’s my experience very few people would rather choose the option of not working, staying at home and waiting for something better to come along than when the possibility of a job will inspire them to get out there and help put their life together and keep it in order.

Mr. Speaker, working creates independence, but our housing policy does not. Mr. Speaker, we want people on their feet and running; not running from the Housing Corporation, we want them running in support of their families and on their...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With capital money we’re investing in this capital budget, I think the money could go a lot further on a short-term investment immediately helping some of those 928 families in need. May I remind the Minister that we have approximately 289 units in public housing and the fact is that even if we bring in through a retrofit process of 25 retrofits this capital budget, it’s just a shell game, because you’re working on fixing 25 but you have to take 25 off the market. So you really haven’t changed the adequacy and affordability issue.

Mr. Speaker, that said, would the...

For clarification, I was referring to the Housing Needs Survey.

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...

Mr. Speaker, if I could add one more issue to this particular problem in going forward, I would ask the Minister reach out to the Pharmacy Association of the Northwest Territories to engage maybe all their association and they could maybe leverage some of the expertise the association would have with their members and perhaps a collective approach could be given to help draw out the direction of this type of health care potential savings. I would hate to think that they would be excluded on any type of expertise that they would probably willingly offer to ensure that the government’s bottom...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the Minister’s own words, he said that, for the outfitters, this is not a program for them. So, Mr. Speaker, if he is hearing from the outfitters that this program doesn’t work for them, I am hearing from outfitters myself still even just recently as in a few minutes before session started, in an e-mail that the ink isn’t even dry. The program doesn’t work and is not for them.

Mr. Speaker, the reality is the only person this program works for is the person who does the allocation of these funds who sits in some ivory tower office not understanding what it is really...

Mr. Speaker, the Minister defines it as a shift in the market. I would call it more like a tourniquet. The reality is there are no eco-tourists showing up at the door. The phone isn’t ringing off the hook. It would cost hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to decommission these lodges. The outfitters are left holding the bag waiting for this turnaround in the caribou market, if I may define it as that, which is almost impossible. What is the government doing to help either sustain these lodges through this downshift, which is easily predictable in the area of three to five years they...

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...