I call Committee of the Whole back to order. I’ve got no other Members on my list for general comments, so is committee agreed that we have no more general comments?
Agreed.
Alright. I’d like to allow the Minister the opportunity to respond to the general comments. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I’d like to say thank you for the comments Members have made, the suggestions, observations. Certainly I think everybody is very interested in the new federal funding that was highlighted in the budget. We still have to firm that up. We have a number that has been given to us as an indication of what the dollars are going to be flowing to the NWT. We expect to have those signed off in a couple of weeks and have that presentation to the standing committee, along with a number of other initiatives that were raised today that we are looking at making some changes, enhancements or introducing.
A number of questions were raised regarding the new money around how we would match the funding. We already have the dollars in our funding that we would utilize as matching funds. This would give us roughly a $52 million per year investment that we would be moving forward on. Right now, the general idea and our thinking, after listening to the Members over the last while, is to start doing some upgrades in the area of public housing stock, upgrades in the area of energy efficiency and also allow people to access dollars for private home repairs. Of course, we would try to continue with the Homeownership Program, but I think there is a little bit of a shift. I mean, all this will be presented to committee for discussion and we are expecting that as we move forward, that our core need will be done sometime early this summer for 2009 and that will indicate, after spending the last investment by the federal government into housing of the Northern Trust that we will see a decrease in our core need. There are still many areas where we need investment.
I mentioned in the House the other day that public housing is still an issue. We have money for infrastructure and there has been no real investment for some time in the area of operation and maintenance for these units. That is a challenge that we have to deal with the federal government on, along with other jurisdictions.
The other issue that was raised today was housing for staff. That’s something that we have put in our budget, $1.5 million, as a place marker to try to deal with the communities that are really struggling to find accommodations for people that are in the communities working as teachers, nurses and other areas. That is something we are working with the Executive on and the Refocusing Government committee and we’ll be bringing those results forward.
There was also a mention regarding the ability or inability of getting people in the communities to do evaluations in the area of energy. Arctic Energy Alliance does a lot of that work right now for us and for people in the communities. We’d like to see our staff start taking on some of that, playing some of that role, staff that are in the communities more and be able to advise people and do some of the testing that is currently being done by other organizations. That might help alleviate some challenges.
That is the same with the mould issues, Mr. Chairman. We are training all of our staff to be able to provide advice, to do the testing, and also advise how to remedy the situation where there is mould in some of the units. The seniors maintenance program was raised by several of the Members here. We have changed our seniors program somewhat so that seniors can qualify just the same as any individual that is applying for assistance. We have removed any of the caps on home repair so that seniors can come and do more than just the $8,000 that we had budgeted historically. They can now qualify for up to $90,000 to do home repairs. We have also carved off some dollars to introduce a seniors maintenance program. We are going to be looking at putting $2,000 or budgeting $2,000 per community so that we can have some mechanism for communities to help their seniors, whether it is furnace cleaning or repair, or water tanks, things of that nature that is really challenging our seniors right now. It will be a general maintenance, and we expect a lot of communities will be hiring private companies or being delivered through the band councils or things of that nature.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Yakeleya raised an issue that has been challenging us for some time. That is the potential to put homeownership units in the community of Colville Lake. This is a small community, an isolated community and doesn’t have any roads and up until lately, didn’t have any running water. It has really been a challenge to find people that would fit the program design of how we bring forward homeownership units. They are a unique community, as the Member has raised, and we expect that we would have to find private, or a special design to accommodate them. We would also have to look at how we could set up a unit that would fit in a budget that they could afford.
We have other communities that have a number of people that are being challenged with some of our programs as some of the people in the Northwest Territories don’t have a credit rating, so we need to be able to accommodate that. We think by designing a fairly basic unit that would fall under the grant that we would provide or forgivable mortgage that we would provide will be able to assist them.
Mr. Bromley asked about the investment in energy upgrade and he pointed out the million dollars that we have in revenue, which is correct. That is the revenue that will be coming into the revenue pot. However, we have earmarked $8 million in MNI expenditures that will be focussed on energy. We have committed that we will follow the EnerGuide 80 and that will go to all our units, whether they are new or they are being retrofitted. That is a standard we have set and we will be incorporating that in our program.
The $69 million is all the revenues that are identified in this budget as other revenue. There was a question about cost-matching and that has already been accommodated. Mr. Jacobson raised the question and the concern about -- you know it is in his riding -- the condition of some of the public housing units, and we certainly recognize and have heard from them, and we still expect that we will be seeing a petition from those communities regarding the status and the situation with our public housing units in those communities and the number of new units that are going in there. As we go forward, we will be doubling our budget in renovations in that area. So with actual change, we will certainly be interested to see and hear specifically what Mr. Jacobson has raised.
Our budgets are based and allocated on core need and in this case, because we don’t have our new budget or our new core need analysis done yet, we are still working on the 2004 assessment. Next year I expect we will use this new assessment as it comes forward early this summer.
We share Mr. Jacobson’s concern regarding the office in Paulatuk. We have been looking for someone there and we would really like to staff that position. Capacity is always an issue when it comes to the smaller communities. We hope that is going to happen fairly soon.
Mr. Chairman, the other issue regarding expending all of our dollars that we have earmarked, what is in this budget and what is coming forward from the federal government, we expect will be done within two years. We plan to have it done in two years. We will, as I said, bring a plan forward for investment. Mr. Beaulieu is quite correct in saying that if we spend all the money and we get the units on the ground and do all the retrofits in two years, we would be eligible for any other jurisdiction’s dollars that have lapsed. Up to now we are the only jurisdiction that did match the federal investment and we are, I think, the only jurisdiction that is able, once we do this last year in our housing trust money, we will be the only jurisdiction that has been able to do that. We hope that in year three we will be able to trap any of the surplus money that is lapsing in other jurisdictions.
I am really quite excited to hear that there is some discussion about community planning around housing. That is something that we really need to encourage. We think dollars could flow better. We think people would understand better what the strategy is and information could get out there better if more people were involved and more people were sharing the management decisions.
The issue of thresholds is another that we have, over the last while, heard many Members raise. We plan to look at that when we do our housing choices evaluation. We will be doing that shortly and we hope that will result in changing the thresholds. We recognize that it has been challenging over the last couple of years as we introduce our programs, for some people to fit in the window that we have identified and the criteria that we have set. We would like to be able to open that up. We do have, still, a number of vacant units and I think the number is at 21 units right now across the Northwest Territories. We are hoping that by opening up the thresholds, changing the thresholds, opening them up and changing the criteria, we will attract more people. We are certainly getting that indication from a lot of the Members in this House.
We have heard that also from the Small Communities committee when we talked about housing. We are also looking at the amount that is given as a contribution or forgivable mortgage, which is a maximum $90,000 and given some of the costs of construction in the more northern part of the NWT, where common three-bedroom houses are up to $300,000 dollars, we may have to look at seeing if we can find a number there that is a better fit.
We do still provide contributions of up to $25,000 for some of the people that are on IAB lands and people that don’t or can’t attain land tenure, so land is still an issue. We are working on resolving some of these with the band governance and especially issues on IAB land. Mr. Chairman, I think everybody is aware now that the Housing Corporation is not allowed to move forward and build, provide mortgage or any type of assistance unless we have land tenure, and the Auditor General had raised this.
Mr. Chairman, we are also really having a difficult time with the number of people across the Territories that are in arrears to this government through land tax or property tax and I think it’s got to be clear that we are not allowed to make an exemption. This is an issue where there is an arrears for taxes and that has to be cleared up through a recovery plan or some type of arrangement with this government before we can do anything.
The housing for staff, as I indicated, is something we are still working on. We are hoping that will get rolled out fairly soon. Our core needs, again this is going to be summer 2009, the allocations in a couple of weeks, we’ll present that to committee along with the other initiatives that we are working on.
We are also trying to find a new design unit as a result of Colville Lake, but other communities have also indicated that they would like to see us come in with a new unit. We are not sure what it will be called yet, but we are looking at designing something that would be very basic. It might be a traditional housing package or something that is very simple, very easy to heat, maybe woodstove and electric cook stove and very little else that we can put in communities that would meet some of the needs of the singles, some of the smaller families that just don’t fit in the category to take on a mortgage. So that’s something we will continue to work on.
We will also continue to provide programming for seniors in terms of seniors’ housing. Our focus is on independent seniors that can maintain their units. With a little bit of care, they continue to live on their own and we want to encourage that. Somebody, I believe it’s Mr. Krutko, raised the issue of trying to work better with the co-ops, now that we have some money, to help them with some of their challenges. That is certainly something we will look at.
The Joe Greenland facility was also raised and the question was asked about when we were going to do it. That was a contract that went out to bid and resulted in the bids being quite a bit higher than we had budgeted for, so we are seeing how we can accommodate the repair that needs to be done.
Mr. Chairman, somebody also raised -- I believe Mr. Krutko -- the issue of NOVEL housing and workforce housing. It’s not something that we have high on our priority list, Mr. Chairman, but the issue or idea of modular units is something we will keep an eye on especially if we get behind in investing or getting all the units we need to put up in the next couple of years. So it’s something we will put on the back burner, but it’s a consideration.
The issue of expanding the workforce is certainly something we agree with. The trades in communities are getting harder and harder to attract and having some people who are trained within communities is something we want to do. We embarked on an Apprenticeship Program and so far we’ve identified 12 positions for apprentices and we’ll try to keep that as a program ongoing and maybe even expand it.
Mr. Chairman, in Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche has highlighted the concern of many people not understanding the programs since we’ve introduced the new housing choices. Since this fall, we’ve really tried to embark on getting the information out there. We’ve launched a public campaign. We have staff from our regions going into the communities to have communications shared with the community members, public campaigns in the communities so that people know when the deadlines are, what the programs are about. We are trying to remove some of the misunderstandings. We are also putting ads in the paper so people know when the deadlines are, when they need to come forward to apply.
Mr. Chairman, there was a concern raised by Members regarding the ability of members or community members to come forward and access some of our programs because their history has continued to be a concern. We have a long list of people that have arrears. We have a long list of people who have done damage or abandoned their units. We do try to work towards accommodating people that are willing to patch up what is not allowed in applying for a new program. Recovery plans have been put in place for a number of people who are really trying to either turn their life around or put themselves back in the good books of the Housing Corporation. We really appreciate that; however, we still have to stay firm. We have a lot of people coming and asking for exemptions. Just write off what I owed for the last 10 years and stuff of that nature. We, as a corporation, are going to stay fairly firm on that. In order to encourage everybody to pay their rents and pay their mortgages, there has to be a demonstration that we aren’t just going to open the door every time somebody complains a little bit too loud.
Mr. Chairman, there are quite a few things that we need to come forward to committee with that, as a new Minister -- I think I’ve been in this position for eight months now -- I’ve heard from Members of this House in different committees and we’re hoping that some of these things we’ll be able to share relatively quickly.
The other thing was we also wanted to have further discussion that we committed to on the appeal system. We are hoping to get our stamp of approval from committee and kick it out the door by April 1st. So there are a number of things that we need to expand on but we are still working on. We had hoped to have everything in place by this budget session, given the sense of urgency that came on the Building Canada Fund, and the need to do the correspondence and have the discussions with the federal Ministers has kind of slowed it up, but we are still working on these issues. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. As there are no further general comments, is committee agreed that we proceed to detail in the tabled document?
Agreed.
Okay. Page 5-41. You will notice, committee, that the budget for the NWT Housing Corp actually appears in the Department of Finance where it will be approved and considered. Every item within the Housing Corp’s tabled document here is basically an information item, but we’ll go through each page as we would with the other departments and if you have questions, we’ll agree with them or not agree with them as we go forward.
We would like to defer the department summary, the financial summary information on page 5-41, and go onto page 5-43, corporate summary, information item, operations expenditure summary.
Agreed.
Any questions? Agreed. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you. Sorry for being so slow. I did want to just ask a question and I apologize if it was covered somewhere and I missed it, but there has been concern on the part of Members and I think local housing organizations, as well, about the number of clients that are in arrears. In some discussions we’ve had with Housing Corp, we’ve talked about a target of a 90 percent collection rate I think on mortgages, but I’m not sure. We also talked at one point, as a result of the Auditor General report, about how the corporation is monitoring these arrears and these collections of arrears in rent and mortgage. So I just wondered if I could get some comment from the Minister on where things are at. How do arrears stand at this time for rents and for mortgages and the 90 percent collection rate as a target? How close are we to achieving that? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister McLeod.
Mr. Chairman, the 90 percent collection rate was the percentage we have been able to collect historically in the year 2004-2005. In 2005-2006, the collection started slipping in the area of rent collection and it dropped down to 76 percent in the year 2006-07. We are now back up to 87 percent collection in the area of rents. Jeff can speak to the mortgages and the collections.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Mr. Anderson.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members may recall that we initiated a mortgage payment plan to provide options to homeowners to deal with the arrears situation. We have been working very hard on it. We have made some progress to date but we still have quite a ways to go on the mortgage portfolio. We are working with people. We want them to be able to remain in their homes. We’ve had about 14 clients so far that have refinanced their mortgage through banks, so we have been able to raise about $700,000 through that process. We have had six clients to date that have turned the unit back to us for a quick claim process and 55 of them have been working on a repayment plan, so we are making some headway on it but we still have a long way to go on that portfolio. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Anderson. Ms. Bisaro.
I think that is it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Next on my list is Mr. Yakeleya.
Mr. Chairman, under the corporate summary, in terms of municipalities and bands, the Minister had mentioned in terms of the unique challenges in some of our smaller bands and some of our charter communities or some of the hamlets or municipalities for the land. Has the Crown corporation designed a protocol with working with lands, band issues or municipalities? This came up in a discussion with the Fort Good Hope Charter Community that wanted to have some discussions with the corporation in terms of lands that are available and being worked on in the communities. I will ask the question in terms of the corporate summary in terms of how they are working with the municipalities and bands in terms of obtaining these lands in a very unique position to build much needed houses in the communities.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister McLeod.
Mr. Chairman, in most cases or situations we sign a universal partnership agreement with the community, the band or the municipality that allows us to work together in a partnership arrangement. The other area and probably more challenging is the ability to build houses on IAB lands or federal Crown lands. Our requirements are that there is a land tenure or a document that testifies to that. In most cases we have two ways we can go and that is to deal with the federal government to give the person a direct lease or the community a lease or the band a lease. The other one is to set up a third-party entity that will allow the entity to hold the land in trust for the band or for the organization that we are dealing with. That seems to be working. We are bringing those strategies forward to some of the communities that have been giving us some concern.
The strategies that are going to be coming forward certainly would possibly help the communities, I guess. Mr. Chair, I would like to ask in terms of the issues here we are just discussing. I am not quite fully briefed as to the issues in the community of Fort Good Hope because it wasn’t given to me over the phone. Basically the request was to look at land issues in Fort Good Hope with the Housing Corporation. I am hoping that this corporation here with the Minister is flexible enough to look at issues such as Fort Good Hope in terms of the issues that they need to resolve to build units in the community and also what he mentioned about Colville Lake with the IAB lands to have units in the community.
Mr. Chairman, the community of Good Hope has already done some partnership arrangement with the NWT Housing Corporation. We were able to develop a number of properties in that community. There is, right now, a desire to start working towards a more formalized agreement in terms of a universal partnership agreement, or a UPA, and will continue to work with them towards that and explain to them and make sure everybody understands what the agreement states.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. We are on page 5-43 which is an information item, corporate summary, operations expenditure summary. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just had a quick question on the operations expenditure summary, other expenses under mortgage and principal. I just want to know why that is an expense. I thought that would be a revenue. Sorry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Minister McLeod.
Mr. Chairman, I will have Mr. Anderson respond to that.
Mr. Anderson.
The mortgage principal and interest is actually the payment we make on our outstanding debt in the corporation. So it is interest and it also includes a bit of principal because we cash flow that through this budget. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Anderson. Next on my list is Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to follow up on the land tenure question specifically with respect to Dettah and Ndilo and just find out if the third-party entity approach that the Minister had mentioned was actually being put in place for those communities. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.
Mr. Chairman, the communities of Dettah and Ndilo have been probably some of the communities that have been most challenging in the area of getting land tenure. We have been working towards a third-party entity and we have had a number of meetings over the last while with the communities. It looked like it was resolved. I believe we have brought that to the federal government’s attention. We still have to formalize that but it doesn’t seem that that will be accepted, so we have to go back to looking at getting a formal federal lease on these lands. The land might be something very challenging. We don’t know what the communities’ response is going to be to that, but we need to qualify the information is up to date.
What makes this so problematic? There must be similar situations in many areas of Canada and the Northwest Territories, probably. I am wondering why this is problematic here. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, it is a question, I guess, from the aboriginal government as to who owns the actual land. It would be relatively simply if everybody agreed that the federal lease would be in order, but in this case we are not getting that positive response from the band.
Mr. Chairman, I think Housing had scheduled a number of Affordable Housing Initiative homes to be constructed there. They were delayed. Is there still an opportunity to put those in place? Are the dollars still available once this land tenure issue is resolved?
Yes, Mr. Chairman. We have carried over I think 10 units because we are not able to settle the land tenure issue. That is still available. We will continue to work with the community to see if we could resolve it. But, Mr. Chairman, it is very difficult if the community refuses to acknowledge the federal lease, then we don’t have much choice. We are probably in a position where it is not going to be a concern because we have the ability to invest, carrying it over for some time may be quite challenging in the future. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister for these comments. Do we know what the core need has been set at or recognized at in the recent past and where we are sitting relative to that for Ndilo and Dettah? Thank you.
We are checking, but I believe all our core needs, for the most part, our communities are at 30 percent except for Colville which is at 76 percent.
I guess I don’t have another question. I just would like to comment. I hope progress can be made on that file. If there is anything I can do as the Member for Weledeh to try and help out with that, I am perfectly willing to do that. I think my sense from constituents is the core need is definitely there for these communities. I would like to see that go forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I will go to the next person on my list. Mr. Krutko.
Just following up on Mr. Bromley’s question, I know that this issue is out there. I know there are ways that you could probably get around it. It is either have some land tenure for 30 years, we get a lease for 30 years subject that that land is in the negotiating process.
I know when we did land selection in the Sahtu and the Gwich’in area, they selected lands where the Housing Corporation had units on it. Basically it was subject to those lands that were IAB lands. We selected those lands but the Housing Corporation was aware that those lands did have that title on it. Once the claim was settled, then you knew which lands were which and either did a land swap in regards to those lands which taken over you either bought it outright or you basically guaranteed to a long-term 20 or 30-year lease with the corporation with the land owner, which now is municipal lands that are owned by the First Nations government. I don’t know why that is something that is a problem here.
We have the Hay River Reserve in the Northwest Territories where we are providing houses from the Housing Corporation on the reserve which is, if anything, a more restrictive process than the land claims process. I think there are ways you could work it through. But I think the cleanest way is just agree with them at the negotiating table, that the government take it to the table and say, look, we need land. You have 30 houses to build here. Is there a guarantee that we can build these units subject to a 30-year lease agreement and subject to the ownership remaining with the band through the claims process?
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister McLeod.
I think times have changed. Historically, the NWT Housing Corporation was dropping houses fairly ad hoc and even on lands that we didn’t have clear title to or we had the rules that were quite broad. Three years ago we had the Auditor General lay down the law for us that require us to have, through the homeownership, a land tenure. Now they can either get that on IAB lands through the federal government or they can have their band acquire a lease from the federal government and sublease.
We thought we had a solution and we are not too sure if it is a workable one anymore, by having another third-party entity, maybe a trust corporation, to hold the land. That doesn’t seem to be realistic anymore.
Mr. Chairman, for us to have tenure, we need to have aboriginal governments agree to a federal lease. We have jurisdictions in the NWT that do not have a settled claim and are not willing to acknowledge that the federal government owns the land and, therefore, not willing to subscribe to a lease. Now that really puts us in a difficult situation, because the rules that we have to follow require us to see land tenure.
I know this matter came up the other day at the Dene leadership meeting when the Premier was there. The issue was why couldn’t you give the money directly to the band to build houses for their membership and let them deal with the federal government and the land issue? At the end of the day it is their membership that needs these houses and they definitely need the units that were allocated based on core need. Is there a possibility that you get the band in Dettah and Ndilo and let them build the houses themselves through their development corporations and whatnot and give them houses that they need? Is that the possibility of going directly through those corporations either through the band or one of their corporate arms? I think, at the end of the day, it is either we do it, they do it, or somebody does it. Right now, nobody is doing anything in that regard and the people need these houses. It is one of the few last communities that haven’t taken advantage of the Northern Housing Trust money that was there. This was one of the hold-out communities. I think that if there are ways that we can get those houses built, give the money to a corporate entity or get them to establish a housing society or something, but do something. I wonder if he considered some of those other options.
We are trying to do something. We have a number of communities that are in the same situation. We are looking for options of how we can accommodate that. Our dollars come with rules. There are criteria. There are accountability issues. We have had requests from a number of band councils, aboriginal governments, to look at the concept of block funding. We are exploring that right now. We haven’t come to any type of conclusion whether that is doable or not.
Again, it is one of those situations where they are negotiating a claim. There is the process that they call interim protection. There are certain limits made in those interim protection agreements that people know going forward that, if you have lands and it is selected, it is going to be subject to change in regards to who will be the owner or the manager of those lands that you presently have a lease on or basically that you have a…and it does directly state in those agreements that IAB lands will be selected in those communities for those First Nations governments which are designated aboriginal lands. Again, it is something that…
In southern Canada, they provide housing on reserves. They provide housing in aboriginal controlled communities. They have Metis settlements in Alberta. They provide Metis housing in Alberta. I don’t know why we are not able to work around this. I know this issue did come up at the leadership meeting. They explored it. I think that it is an issue that should be resolved so that we can pack up the Affordable Housing Initiative and move on to the next $50 million.
There are two completely different scenarios in the sense that the southern jurisdictions are able to accommodate new units on their reserve lands and Metis settlement lands because there is a federal government that is willing to under write it by way of a federal loan guarantee. We don’t have that luxury here. The situation is in the communities in the Northwest Territories that are on unsettled lands. That, I guess, is a possibility for those jurisdictions to go to negotiate at the negotiating table, Mr. Chairman. I am not at the negotiating table. We can explore different concepts, but that would have to be something negotiated. We certainly can fly that by any of those jurisdictions, but I think that has already been looked at.
I am not sure if some of these communities are far enough along to get the ear of the federal government to start setting aside lands yet. Those are issues we certainly can look at again, but I think we already tested the waters on those fronts.
Thank you. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you. I have three questions for the Minister. The first question to the Minister is, he was responding to a Member here in terms of the core need, and he is correct on the 76 percent of core need in Colville Lake. He is very correct on that. The information I have is from the 2004 percentage. Deline is 41.7 percent, Fort Good Hope is 46.9 percent, Norman Wells is 8.5 percent, Tulita 35.7 percent. This is the information I received for 2004. With the funding that the Minister will be receiving on behalf of the territorial government to look at our housing across the Northwest Territories, and with what Mr. Bromley is discussing in his community of Dettah with the funding, is a portion of this funding with the vision of the Minister’s department...Does he foresee -- I know it is crystal balling -- bringing down these core needs that are high in the community? I know there are other core needs that are probably high in other communities, that I am not aware of, but these are ones that I picked out selectively for the Sahtu region. I think, is that the vision of this department, sorry, this corporation to bring this core need down to a level like Colville Lake, like 76? What we see in two years on Colville Lake, core needs will be dropped down, I don’t know to what percentage, but certainly we cannot sustain 76 percent for too long. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you. Minister of Housing
