Debates of February 17, 2011 (day 41)

How many mortgages does the NWT Housing Corporation have at this time that are what I would define as active? So whether they’re in arrears or they’re in good standing. Thank you.

Really lots. We have 428 active files, number of clients. Thank you.

We have a little more than 400. Am I correct by saying that we have approximately, rounding numbers off, we only have 160 clients paying their mortgages within a reasonable time or on time, and we have the remainder, we’ll guesstimate at about 240 or more, who are not paying their mortgage? Is that correct? Thank you.

Those numbers the Member has quoted, they are pretty close.

As my last question, seeing as how my time has reached the end on the clock, when can we expect to see… I think the Minister had indicated that there are some foreclosures and there is paperwork, it sounds as if there are 50 people. When can we expect some paperwork of that nature to be filed and, furthermore, if you are closing these files through a legal process, how much money is that outstanding, those 50 files? What is that worth to the government? Thank you.

We have, I think, served some notices right now that we have as part of the 50. There are still a number of them that are pending right now, but we do have some that have already been served, so that process has already been started. As far as the actual number, the total value of our mortgage portfolio is $86 million and the value of our forgivable loans is $45 million. The value of our repayable loans is $41 million dollars. Thank you.

Is the Minister able to inform us as to what those 50 outstanding mortgages that it sounds like they are pursuing legal action on, the value of those particular mortgages once we foreclose and put those up for sale? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. I see that your time has run out but I will allow that question. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We will have to get that information and relay it on to the Member. Thank you.

Okay we are on page 5-43, corporate summary, agreed?

Speaker: SOME HON. MEMBERS

Agreed.

Information item. Moving on to page 5-44, information item, active positions by region.

Speaker: SOME HON. MEMBERS

Agreed.

Moving on to page 5-47, information item, executive, operations summary, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A quick question here, I am just wondering what all is being covered under contract services here. I see it is 70 percent up from last year and I wonder if perhaps that has something to do with the shelter policy or something, but I would like to find out. Thank you.

Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is correct; that is the money for the shelter policy. Thank you.

Given all the homegrown experts on the Standing Committee on Social Programs, I don’t understand why EDI would want to contract anything out, Mr. Minister. But seriously, though, the Minister has a lot of in-house expertise. What is contemplated here that is extra in terms of contracting out?

Mr. Polakoff.

Speaker: MR. POLAKOFF

There is a combination of resources that we are looking at or that we are actually engaged in. While there is money that is identified for the consultants’ work, there are Housing Corporation personnel involved, as well, through policy and programming, both the policy area and the programming area. There is also participation, and very significant participation, by the Department of Executive, as well as the program review area. We also anticipate that we will have some participation through the NWT Statistics Bureau.

Can I get confirmation that those agencies are charging the NWT Housing Corporation for their contributions to the work?

Speaker: MR. POLAKOFF

In some cases that would be correct. For example, the NWT Statistics Bureau we would anticipate would be billing the Housing Corporation, but in other cases it would be participation by staff.

I was just under the illusion that we were all sort of one, so why would they be charging the Housing Corporation?

Speaker: MR. POLAKOFF

That is typically the way in which reimbursements are provided to the NWT Statistics Bureau, they do it on a contract basis.

That would be a similar approach for utilizing the staff from the Statistics Bureau when we do the needs survey, the community needs survey. Thank you.

I will leave it at that but if the Minister has anything he can provide, I would appreciate it, just for my understanding. But that is all I have on this page. Thank you.

Mr. Minister, if you have any materials that could be provided to the Member in regards to his questioning.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are actually looking at trying to nail down a date where we can provide the committee with an update with the work that is going on and some of the issues that Member Bromley had spoken of. Thank you.

Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to ask the Minister, in terms of the federal, provincial and territorial levels, are the Ministers coordinating a strong strategic position to continue hammering the federal government on the other ways that they can support them with their housing declining dollars that they need to keep the federal government on those? Right now it seems like they are offloading the social housing to the communities, or to the Territories, and for us it is going to be hundreds of millions of dollars if we take on this role here.

Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is correct; if we were to take this all on, it would cost the Government of the Northwest Territories a lot of money and obviously we are concerned with the declining funding. We have been trying to engage the federal government in sitting down with all jurisdictions in Canada to find ways where we could convince them that this is a program, the CMHC funding obviously is something that we seriously need otherwise all jurisdictions are going to have to start dipping into their own funds. This is one that I think that we need to continue to be very aggressive in trying to engage the federal government and I have invited them up here. I have invited the Minister up here, I have invited the president of CMHC up here to show them firsthand some of the issues that we are challenged with, so it is an ongoing battle. It is an ongoing struggle, but we need to keep pushing them to realize that they need to keep this funding flowing. At the same time, we can’t just sit on our hands and wait for them to give us an answer. We have to find ways, as a corporation, of trying to be proactive in dealing with what we obviously know is coming, unless they change their minds, and that is a decline in funding, so we have to try and cut back on our operations and maintenance, design and build newer, more energy-efficient houses, which would then cut back on all the expenses. So we continue to do what we can to alleviate some of the pressures that we are going to face, but at the same time we continue to try to be fairly aggressive with the federal government to get them to see the light. Thank you.

Norman Yakeleya

Sahtu

Certainly if there is anything that you can do with your counterparts, Mr. Minister, to let the federal government know the importance of their support. You talked about the energy-efficient homes that we want in the Northwest Territories. That means working with your other colleagues in government here to put these types of houses in our communities. I hope you have luck with the president coming to the North. Certainly we welcome him to look at some of the homes that we have in our communities, in Colville Lake to look at some of the situations that people have to live there. He may have a little more sympathetic heart there to look at ways they could support us.

At the same time, we are educating our people, the true meaning of home ownership in terms of taking care of their homes. We really are in a trap to not depend on the government so much to change a light bulb for us or have things done for us if we are in homes. There is a lot of work to do. I hope we will work with the other departments and that there is a new program that comes out on being truly self-reliant. That is one of our goals. People who do own their own homes know that it costs a lot of money to maintain it, to fix the pipes or fix the washroom facilities or the furnace. They are unable to pick up the phone to call Housing. You have to call the contractor. Sometimes the contractor is another community away, or the parts, materials and supplies are here in Yellowknife or Inuvik or the Wells. It costs a lot of money. It really makes you think about how easy it is for people who live in some of these housing units to operate. I am going to leave it at that and let the Minister respond briefly.

With that, I will allow the Minister to respond and then I will recognize the clock. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with Mr. Yakeleya 100 percent. It is about educating those out there and making them realize it is quite a privilege to have a roof over your head and make sure that you look after it. It is a message that I have been trying to get out there. I know in some of my travels around the Territories and meeting with some of the community leaders or regional leadership, I mentioned that to them that we, as leaders, need to make our people aware of how fortunate they are to live in these units. A lot of these units were brand new when they moved in and they don’t take care of them as well as they should. I believe the message is going to start getting to them.

The LHOs are starting to take a harder stance on the upkeep of the unit and how you look after it. I think if we make people accountable, I think we should hopefully see the change in attitude. It is one that we continue to work on, but I always have been fairly confident that the message will get out there and we will have folks out there that will actually start looking after their units.

As homeowners, as most of us are, we realize the importance of looking after our units. This is something that I believe that most folks in the Territories are going to realize, especially a lot of the clients in the public housing units where it is easy to just pick up the phone and phone the LHO and say my doorknob is broken. There is no toilet paper on my holder. It is a work in progress.

Report of Committee of the Whole

Speaker: MR. SPEAKER

Can I have the report of Committee of the Whole, please, Mr. Krutko.