Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of the Housing Corporation. I want to ask the Minister, in terms of the Housing Corporation, in terms of the policies and the programs that the Minister is responsible for, I want to ask him in terms of how do we help a lady like this that is in a bad situation in terms of her house in regard to the conditions she lives in in Fort Good Hope.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, without having the name of this constituent, and if the Member would provide that, then I would commit to the Member that we’ll follow up with it and see if there’s anything that we can do. Pretty well all of our programs are application-based, so there’s that process that we need to go through too. But if the Member is willing to provide me with the name and the details, then I can commit to him we’ll follow up with it. Thank you.
I appreciate the gesture from the Minister in terms of this specific person. Now I want to ask, in terms of the administration and the flexibility of this program, he’s supposed to be simplifying these programs, the government and the Housing Corporation administration. Does the Corporation have an appeal process in place where if there’s an application that does get rejected, that there can be an appeal process to a body rather than just to the Housing Corporation?
Mr. Speaker, at this particular moment there is no official appeals process in place. However, we are putting the work together to come up with an official appeals process and our intent is to have that in place by the next program application cycle. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, in regard to the next program cycle, in between now and the next program cycle, I mean, this is only one of many concerns I have from the region. And certainly I will probably ask the Minister again, is there an interim appeal process or do we just go to the process that we’re doing now, MLAs coming and seeing the Ministers?
Mr. Speaker, going to the MLAs and Ministers should be a last resort. However, without an appeals process in place, we’re seeing a lot of that and we’re hoping to get away with that. If this could be dealt with at the district level, that would be our preference. They would be able to speak to the district director and make an appeal to them and see what comes out of that. Hopefully, by the time we go through the next application cycle we’ll have fewer and fewer appeals being made to the Ministerial and MLA level.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in terms of the process between now and the next application cycle, in terms of going to the district, is it also possible that the applicants could go to the local housing authority boards in terms of working out some type of an appeal process? I know that’s something that could be considered rather than to the district office. Would the Minister look at something in the interim?
Mr. Speaker, these are the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation programs so we stay away from using the LHOs. They have their own process that they have to deal with as far as rentals go. So as of right now there are, basically, a couple of options: they could speak to the district manager and then, as we’ve seen in many cases, a lot of them are speaking to the MLAs and that’s being relayed to the Minister. We do try and follow up with all the inquiries we get and see in each particular case what the situation was, what was the reason it was turned down. Until we get the new official appeals process in place, right now these are their only two options. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
