Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The last comment was nothing more than just a shot at me, which I’m fine with, and a promo ad by the Minister. Mr. Speaker, we can’t continue to blame others. In this fiscal cycle we are only going to build less than one unit per community. He has not said one thing about trying to get new units in above the rate we are providing when we’re provided money by CMHC. He’s not telling us how he’s fought with Cabinet to get more money. He has not told us how he’s engaged private sector investment in communities that have no market. I’m not hearing anything innovative. I’m...

I want to thank the Minister for that direct and clear answer. My math now tells me we’re doing, or sorry, the government is proposing into the next fiscal cycle to build 0.91 houses on average across the 33 communities. If you are one of those communities who is lucky to get one of those houses, or if it’s two or three of them, you are very fortunate.

I want to ask the Minister, as the Minister of Housing, what is he doing to increase the new housing portfolio, increase our stock of public housing, increase our ability to provide the affordability housing measure? At this rate, we are not...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yet again we’re all witness to hear of these platitudes that actually provide no detail, and this is the frustration the public continues to have. If it’s a legitimate reason, I think all reasonable people would say, and fairly agree, that reviews need to be done and implementation needs to be done at the right pace, but yet all we hear is we need to act on this, we have stuff that’s been brought to his attention. My goodness, I mean, anyone can give that answer on any subject. That could mean almost anything. So, today is the day.

Why doesn’t the Minister get some of...

I will help the Minister here. The life of this Assembly is yet another year. The WSCC has been working on these Occupational Health and Safety Regulations for several years now. I know they have been working with industry, and certainly labour on this, to find some agreement to go forward.

What are some of the issues in the delay that we may have to wait up to almost a whole year in the implementation of these regs? What’s stopping the process from actually getting done? Is it the Minister or is it some other issue that we need to be aware of?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the years on Halloween, I’ve been trying to give some interesting statements. One year I gave my version of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and last year I tried to do a theme statement behind the Adam’s Family and I called it the Cat in the Cloud Cabinet Family. So in trying to keep with this theme, this year I’ve used the theme of Monster Mash, so please bear with me.

While I was working in the Ledge late one night, my eye beheld an eerie site. It was the McLeod government’s policies that caused such fright: a tax on schools, taxes with their might.

Suddenly, to my...

I want to thank Member Moses for his very ministerial technique of dealing with that.

---Laughter

It’s funny no one on the Cabinet side is laughing. The only other thing that I think, I think pretty much it’s self-explanatory on some of the changes that folks who do read this very closely will probably figure out. Maybe we could get Mr. Moses, or if he would again use his technique to help us find out why we’re repealing some of the prohibitions on broadcasting. I think that a bit of a detailed answer on that would probably help the general public. It’s probably the only area that I show...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this issue. I am going to support the $40 million, but I do that with sort of the side comment of saying I feel that we have little choice. By obstructing the $40 million, I feel that we put the project and other types of headaches for us and we view them as let’s frustrate the process by causing a delay, I guess, in some manner or form.

Members have been very unhappy with the $40 million and how it has come about, but at the same time, I’m a realist and know that if we struck this $40 million, what frustrations have we caused? We...

I want to give deep and sincere thanks to the Minister for recognizing my concern about public housing. It’s an important issue for me. I will accept every offer he just made about providing that information.

In the spring I was asking some details about certain public housing units and they were in the Nunakput region, interestingly enough, the one that you represent, Mr. Speaker. I had some concerns about the particular condition rating. I drilled down a little further later on, asking about if they were as qualified to do it as such and was the information fully contained.

I’d like to know...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I love asking questions and I certainly enjoy the answers that I sometimes get. Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Housing Minister.

We all know mould is a serious issue in the Northwest Territories, certainly in public housing. Quite often we hear a lot about it. I want to know how often public housing units are tested for mould, who does the testing, what skills do they have, how do we ensure authorities are testing them properly and what expertise do we use. Those are the bulk of the questions and, well, let’s find a way to get through them.

I can appreciate from the very first response from the Minister that he’s maybe not able to fully answer the question, so maybe I’ll take a slightly different tact.

Does the Minister agree that regional grassroots input is important so each region can identify what’s critical to them to help spark their individual economy?

The example I gave in my Member’s statement, I’m sure you’ll recall, Mr. Speaker, was I mentioned how maybe in Tulita the fishing industry isn’t quite the same as it is in Hay River, where we need to support Hay River slightly differently because they have a big fishing...