Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee strongly recommends that the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation amend its procurement practices by separating the labour and material components of the corporation construction contracts to ensure small community contractors have a better ability to submit bids on projects occurring in small communities. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The motion is being distributed. The motion is in order. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called.
---Carried
Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also think this government has to do a better job of trying to work with local contractors to be able to deal with the repair aspect of housing. One of the problems we seem to have a problem with is the area of seniors’ homes. I am trying to work them into my statement here. I have three minutes.
Thank you, committee. We will just put a pause for a second here. Thank you, committee. We will now continue. Mr. Krutko was speaking. Mr. Krutko.
Do I get my three minutes back?
---Laughter
I was just stalling for time, but the issue I was talking about was in the area of elders programs in our communities, especially a lot of the elders need some maintenance of their dwellings. We talk about trying to keep elders in their homes. Especially it seems like a lot of times there are challenges to get people to do the work in the communities. I think that we as a government have to find a way that we can provide the service but also do it in a way that it is… If we can’t do one community, maybe look at bundling these programs.
I know the Housing Corporation does annual maintenance on their housing units. A lot of times they hire summer students to help them clean out water tanks and things like that. If possible, I think that we have to look at some way of ensuring that the elders programs are being delivered, especially on the maintenance side of maintaining the elders service and maintaining their homes. In most cases we do put out tenders on them, but a lot of the times we don’t get a response. Is there a possibility of working this somehow into the responsibility of the local housing authorities?
The idea in the past was give the money to the housing authorities. Let them hire a couple extra people with the money we gave them and then add the seniors in the communities to that list of maintenance that have to be done on public housing and include the elders on that so we benefit both the Housing Corporation and we provide the service to the elders in the communities. I think that idea is still a good idea. I think that we should be seriously considering it. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister McLeod.
Mr. Chairman, that is something that we would be willing to look at if the LHOs were willing and able to take on the preventative maintenance part of it. I think that is something that does make sense right now. We do preventative maintenance on the seniors units plus seniors can still qualify for CARE, and many of them have had repairs done through the CARE program. Preventative Maintenance Program is a big one that we have heard some concerns where people coming from out of town have been doing some of the work. This is something that we can discuss with the LHOs and see if they are able to add it as part of their Preventative Maintenance Program and that is something we would be willing to do. The money that we spend, we can just forward it to the LHOs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Committee, we are on page 5-49, information item, finance and infrastructure services, operations expenditure summary. Are there any questions? Mr. Yakeleya.
Just on the one there, I just left off and I haven’t yet talked to the Minister about this in terms of when they have packages for home units in the communities. I wanted to ask the Minister, has he checked into this issue? I don’t know if it has come to his office yet in terms of some of the units that have missing supplies. It takes them a bit to get the supplies flown into my region where everything is flown in this time of year. Now the winter road is open so they will probably be driving. However, when the packages are there, they are going to build a unit and sometimes they open the crates and sometimes some parts are not there and they have to order it. It goes through the whole bureaucracy of administration. About two or three months later the parts come in. Is that something that is an issue? I know before it used to be different. All the parts used to be there sort of thing. Now it seems like an issue, especially in the one community that I represent, also in the other communities I should say. Is that something that the Minister is aware of?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of House, Mr. McLeod.
Mr. Chairman, we are aware of that. There have been some concerns with that. We have taken some steps to address that. Some of it is we send the list out there. We know everything that is needed for a particular project. Sometimes some of it doesn’t make it to the community. The folks that are responsible for that project will usually do a check. If there are pieces that are missing, they will then advise the supplier and they would have to make sure that the piece is there. It is something that I have heard about. It is not a huge issue as much as it used to be. Still, we were supposed to be providing packages to the communities and sometimes if pieces are missing, that can cause delays and if you miss shipping and things like that it can cause delays. It’s something that we’re well aware of and we’re taking steps to address and trying to not have this go on too much because it does affect the communities.
The Minister is correct in that it does have an effect on the contractors in terms of their reputation as builders and suppliers. Paying off the suppliers for the materials or whatever. It has an effect on their business and has an effect on the regional operations in terms of getting the materials in there. I’m glad the Minister said they’re looking at it and hopefully next year we won’t see this as a major issue for us in the communities.
I know there’s a real ambitious plan here to put all units into the communities. It’s a lot of stress on everybody, especially when you have materials coming in and people want to get into these units. I’m glad the Minister said he has an eye on it. I believe the staff will keep him appraised on this. This is something that needs to be cut off and said this is it. Give a clear message to the people who are putting these packages together that this is unacceptable. Especially for the Housing Corporation. You guys pay millions and millions of dollars for supplies for the company. We can’t put up with this kind of shabby business here. You’re the Housing Corporation. You have to let them know that it’s important to our community. When you don’t have all-season roads, you can’t get materials all the time. It’s key for us in our communities. I want to support the Minister in saying that this is a corporation that should stand by and go for it. You can’t have these guys do this to us. Especially in the communities where they’re not involved in discussions at a higher level. They’re just there to build the houses, get the contract, and do a job for the community.
I just wanted to say that. I’m glad the Minister is looking at it. For me it’s something that he knows I’m interested in and would like to see it handled in a way that I don’t have contractors or people coming to me asking what’s going on. I’ll just leave it at that.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Committee, we’re on page 5-49, information item, finance and infrastructure services, operations expenditure summary. Any questions?
Agreed.
Page 5-50, information item, finance and infrastructure services, grants and contributions. Any questions? Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A question on housing for staff, $1.5 million has been reduced to zero. I’m wondering if the government -- I know this is not a solely Housing Corporation initiative -- has abandoned the housing for staff initiative.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I stated before, this was one-time funding but we have not closed the door on this. This is money of which there’s been an uptake of right now. We’re more than willing in the future if the program continues to be a success and we find that we do need more funding, then we’ll come back to this forum to request the funding.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Is that it? Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Committee, page 5-50, information item, finance and infrastructure services, grants and contributions. Questions?
Agreed.
Page 5-53, information item, debt repayment, operations expenditure summary. Questions?
Agreed.
Page 5-55, information item, programs and district operations, operations expenditure summary. Questions?
Agreed.
Page 5-56, information item, programs and district operations, grants and contributions. Questions?
Agreed.
Page 5-59, information item, local housing organizations, operations expenditure summary. Questions?
Agreed.
Page 5-60, information item, local housing organizations, grants and contributions. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask a question here. A while ago we were given some information with regard to, well, actually it’s a tabled document; Public Housing Vacancy Status. I noted in Yellowknife we have a wait list of, actually, this is February 15, 2009, there are 141 people or families waiting for a unit within a total complement of 293 public housing units. That’s 150 percent units are required or 50 percent of the possible units are on a wait list. I just wondered from a corporation perspective what they can do to assist the Yellowknife Housing Authority to try and accommodate some of these people who are on this huge wait list.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The waiting list now, I think the Member quoted 149, it’s down to 109 currently. It’s down to 109. So some people have been accommodated. We do have a lot of lease commitments in the city. The public housing units, this is basically what we have now. Other than putting new houses on the ground or finding some new lease commitments this is going to be an issue. There’s a waiting list for pretty well all of the communities. This is one that we need to address and if it means... I think the city has new public housing units coming this year, so there will be some new public housing units being put on stream this year.
Thanks for the updated number, but that’s still one-third more units required than what we have space for. I’m sure that’s not what we’re building. I appreciate that things can’t be done totally, but from a corporation perspective is there any reason why we have so many people on the waiting list? Is it just that, do all of these people qualify? I presume they do. Do we have that many people requiring housing in Yellowknife? Even out of the total units in the Territory, it’s like some 2,300 units and 110 of them or so are here in Yellowknife. That’s still a pretty huge number. Is there any hope that the corporation can do something to try and reduce this waiting list further?
Okay. I got lost here. In the Northwest Territories there are almost 500 on the waiting list across the Territories. So we have a huge job ahead of us. We’re taking little steps here in the city to try and alleviate some of the problem. I couldn’t answer the Member’s question as to why there’s such a huge waiting list. There could be a migration of people into the city. There could be many other reasons. And the economy could have a part in it. But we’re doing what we can. I can assure the Member that we’ll continue to work with the City of Yellowknife and the CMHC on this affordable housing organization that they’re hoping to set up and then see what we can do there to alleviate some of the housing issues in the city. If things go along as they’re going, we’re going to need more houses on the ground not only in Yellowknife but across the Territory, especially in some of the larger centres. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. The document that I’m looking at showed only 300 vacancies in the Territory. So if it’s gone up to 500 across the Territory, that’s not good. Yellowknife has gone a bit, but the whole Territory has gone up a lot. So that’s not progress, in my mind.
I had one other question. The corporation was working with local housing organizations to provide them with some training and to provide them with some assistance in terms of operating more efficiently and collecting more of their arrears and they’re working on rent collections and so on and I just wondered, you know, as to that program of sort of advancing the local housing organizations to reach a higher level of skills and quality of service and so on. How has that been going? Do you feel that there has been some success and that the organizations are progressing? Thank you.
There’s always been within the LHOs a high degree of skills. The LHO managers are very well qualified. We have tenant relations officers that have been with the LHO for years and so the capacity at the local level, which has always been very good, continues to get better. We continue to work with the LHOs to provide training for them and just assisting them in any way possible so that they’re able to do their job much better, but the LHOs are usually a long serving group and they’re usually within the organization for years. So they have good understanding of how the system works and they’re progressing quite well, and as we get into more arrears collections and rent collections and new technology, then they’re constantly being updated. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Committee, once again, we’re on page 5-60, information item. Mr. Yakeleya.
Mr. Chair, I seek unanimous consent to go back to 5-55.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Member for Sahtu requests committee to go back to page 5-55.
---Unanimous consent granted.
Go ahead, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, colleagues. Mr. Chair, I have a motion, a committee motion here.
Very good, Mr. Yakeleya. Go ahead.
