We’ll work with the district office and the local housing organizations to identify any units that could be used in the community. Our plan is to send a reference with a terms of reference to all communities that might want to access this program. Then we do have a homelessness coordinator who is quite interested in trying to get out into the communities and work with communities on proposals and things along those lines.
Once the budget has gone through and we have approval of the Legislative Assembly, we’ll send letters out to communities and gauge interest. I see we will probably have some good uptake and a lot of interest in this particular program. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Next on my list I have Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. My first comment is related to what I see as the social trend, the trend of social housing and moving away from homeownership. As we know, in communities we are challenged with finding employment and business opportunities, for that matter. Having a job is very far and few. If you do indeed work, you’re working on a seasonal basis. For example, in my home community there’s a large injection of job opportunities at the health centre and that’s not going to start until about April and people manage to get by in terms of trying to make a living, at the same time they ultimately strive for the ultimate pride, which is owning your own home.
I know in the past the Housing Corporation has offered a program in terms of first time homebuyers. I think it was a program to at least give some incentive for people to buy their own homes by giving them a portion of equity to go to the bank with. I don’t know if that’s still in existence or not.
The other point regarding social housing is that you’d indicated that there are about 39 older units that exist. Whether that’s just one community or throughout the NWT, there are elders that have lived in their homes for a long time. They’ve raised their family there. Now they’re living on their own and they continue to pay rent and some of them are appalled, basically, that they’re not given the option of either buying their home outright or at least given credit for their homes.
I wanted to at least get an indication from the Minister that these things have been contemplated in terms of meeting the needs of elders. That’s my first point. I want to seek some information from the Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. As a Housing Corporation, we’d like to see as many people in their own homes as possible. If you look at the houses that we’ve been providing over the years, we have 2,400 public housing units. I think through the years we’ve managed to get about 1,500 homeownership units starting from way back to the present. So we’ve put a lot of people into their own homes and we’re still trying to tailor some of our programs so we can get more people into their own homes.
We have to be careful. We’ve had a number of clients that have turned their units back over to the NWT Housing Corporation because once they got into homeownership they realized it was a lot different than being a public housing client and they just weren’t able to keep up with the demands of being a homeowner.
The Member was asking about subsidies, I believe through the HELP program. The HELP program was designed so we can get a potential client into a unit for up to two years and then after two years they would be responsible for all the utilities and the operation of the home. After two years, if they determine that they might want to go the next step, then they can make an application to purchase the home or another home. I believe the subsidy used to be $10,000 that we would give them towards this, but now it’s up to $20,000 that we’re able to provide a subsidy for.
The PATH program is another one where, if they’re eligible, clients can qualify for up to 48 percent of the purchase price and they can take that money to the bank to leverage more funding and get into a mortgage with the bank. I think that that would help a lot of people.
Again, as far as the elders go, we have I think as a Housing Corporation, not only as the Housing Corporation but as the Government of the Northwest Territories, I think we have some of the best programs for our seniors in the country. I’ve had an opportunity in my role as Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation to travel across the country and listen to people talk about the programs that they have and compared to the ones that we’ve got, I mean, we have the Cadillac of programs for our seniors in the Northwest Territories and they’re appreciative of that. We do try to work with them closely. There were programs a number of years ago to get seniors into their own homes and with the Fuel Subsidy Program, our preventative maintenance program, and our GSOs and our people on the front lines going to work with the seniors to make them aware of some of the programs that are available to them. I think, as well, the NWT Seniors’ Society has a handbook that speaks to some of the programs that are offered.
We try to get as much information out there as possible to make our seniors and all residents aware of some of the programs that we offer and it’s an ongoing work. I think what we have to do is we try to provide the Social Programs committee with regular updates on some of the programs as we’re changing them and as we’re improving them, and I think we’re almost due for a briefing soon to update them on some of the changes that we’re making to the programs that we’re offering. Thank you.
Thank you. I’d like to thank the Minister for sharing that information. I have three points, by the way, but my second point is a matter of jurisdiction and that relates to the Hay River Reserve. I know it has been a challenge of this government to try and work through the levels of authority and legislation because the reserve is a unique jurisdiction in the NWT tied with the federal government. I know it has been a dilemma and frustration, at least from constituents, to see houses that remain empty and yet governments are basically stymied of trying to reach a solution. I know there have been overtures from ATFN to see if there’s a workable solution to trying to at least bring heads together, trying to consider some options. I think discussions have gone as far as approaching the federal body charged with housing, but that hasn’t led to any conclusive or effective options and solutions to the dilemma.
Has there been any movement on the front of trying to come up with a suitable working arrangement with K’atlodeeche First Nation? Mahsi.
We have offered up a meeting to the leadership of the Hay River Reserve. That has been a challenge. Almost from the time of the Minister previous to me, that has been a bit of a challenge. Part of it is because of the fact that it’s on reserve land. If there were eligible clients there and they were able to get I think it’s a band council resolution, a BCR, to have tenure to the land, then they would be able to have access to those units.
We’ve tried everything, we’ve tried selling it to the band. We’ve had many discussions on this particular file and we’d really like to see it come to a conclusion because those units have been empty for a while and, ideally, we’d like to see six clients in there. If we can get six clients that are eligible, six clients that have land tenure because land tenure is one of the conditions of accessing our program.
We’ve worked with the band. I know they’ve written a letter to AANDC, if I’m not mistaken. So it’s something that we need to get resolved fairly quickly because these houses have been empty. I’ve been Minister now of the NWT Housing Corporation since 2009 and those units have been empty since then, and even before then I think they were still just being completed. Part of the problem was getting them completed in a timely manner. I think that’s what kind of held everything up and then getting suitable or eligible clients to get in there and, as well, getting the land tenure.
So, I believe I’ve written a letter, or the president has written a letter to the leadership there and we’ve offered up another meeting because this is a situation that we would like to get resolved. We’ve been working with the Hay River Reserve to try to make that happen. Thank you.
My final point is just trying to understand the scope of April 1, 2014, when there is the transfer of responsibility, more authority, and in respect of land tenure and whether that holds any implications for the Housing Corporation. Right now, currently in communities you have Commissioner’s and then you have Crown land or IAB lands, and whether that’s going to change, because I think in people’s aspirations to build their own home there has to be, of course, a level of equity plus financing, and banks want a level of certainty, and whether that’s going to change or not.
The Crown land will convert to Commissioner’s land. The IAB lands will pretty well remain the same because I think that is an agreement with the Government of Canada to reserve land, so I don’t think those are going to change. I’ll confirm that and I’ll communicate that to the Member, but as far as I understand, that’s the only one that won’t change.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Next on my list I have Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a few comments. I have a couple of questions. More concerns, I guess, than questions particularly. I would like to echo my colleague’s comment earlier about the good work that the Housing Corporation has been doing. Two things, in my mind: One, they’ve been keeping Members updated, as the Minister mentioned a little while ago, and when we are updated and we have information, then that lets us know what’s going on and certainly keeps us much happier. We don’t get cranky that way. I think the changes to the programs that the Housing Corporation has instituted seem to be working out well.
I’m really pleased to hear the words “housing continuum.” They appeared in the Minister‘s opening remarks, and they are used relatively often when the Minister and his officials come to meet with committee, and I’m really pleased because I think that’s something that was lacking previously, so it now seems to be part of the language of the Housing Corporation and I’m very glad to hear that. We do have to cover our residents from absolute homelessness through…birth to death, basically, kind of thing.
I do notice there’s a significant increase in the budget, about $20.7 million if I did the math correctly. I think I understand where the additions are coming from or what the additions are for, but I did wonder, as I looked at those numbers, whether or not the Housing Corporation is going to have the capacity to be able to accomplish everything they want to accomplish in this next budget year. There are always carry-overs from one year to the next and I don’t know what the amount of carry-overs are for ’13-14, but I just wonder if the corporation has considered the amount of work that is going to be required in budget year ’14-15 and do they feel confident that they’ll be able to get it done. I think all of us have seen piles of crates in communities waiting for houses to be built and that’s not something that is of benefit to our residents. It’s just a general sort of concern as we do have the capacity within the corporation to handle both carry-overs and what we’ve got on the books for this next budget year.
I’m really pleased to have seen an increase in the Homelessness Fund. It’s a little more than doubled and I think that’s great. I heard the Minister mention Shelter Capital Fund, so I presume that’s what the increased money is for, but I would like to hear from the Minister what the extra $358,000 is intended for.
On the subject of homelessness and shelters, I have questioned the Minister on this before, but I am concerned that we have shelters, particularly in the city of Yellowknife, where there is an issue of capacity for staff. There are no standards for shelters, and in response to my query the Minister indicated that we have legislation in place which should handle anything that NGOs would be required to do to operate an emergency shelter or a homelessness shelter. I don’t think that’s where I’m going.
We do have standards for our shelters that deal with women and families escaping family violence, and that’s the sort of standards that I’m looking for are the standards that apply to our family violence shelters should also apply, in my mind, to homelessness shelters. At the moment, we have situations where we have one staff person overnight for 40 to 50 people, and we would never see that in any government operation. We wouldn’t allow that. The union wouldn’t allow it. My point is I don’t think that we should be allowing that in our NGOs. We all know NGOs don’t have a lot of money so they staff what they can to whatever limits that they can, and I would suggest if we had standards in place, that would force them to hire more staff. It would force us, hopefully, to provide them with more funding so they could hire more staff. I just raised that as a concern and I would hope that maybe the Minister might change his mind if he thinks about it a little bit, or maybe we have a conversation.
The Transitional Rent Supplement Program has been mentioned, and I agree with – I think it was Mr. Dolynny who mentioned it – it’s a good program. I am still concerned, though, and I’ve mentioned this before, that I wish the rent supplement could apply to people who are in transitional housing, and I’m speaking particularly of transitional housing that the YWCA operates. There are a lot of people there who are coming directly from homelessness into some sort of a small home of their own. Generally, if they do that they have absolutely no income or at least they start with no income, and they certainly could use the rent supplement.
Lastly, just in general terms, we have made – we, the royal we, the government – the Housing Corporation has made a number of changes to programs. We’ve initiated new programs and we’ve made changes to old programs. I would like to know what we are doing to evaluate them. Some of them are really recent, but some of them have been ongoing for close to a year now, and I know oftentimes the government says, well, we’re going to wait three years and we’ll evaluate after three years, but I think that’s too long a time period. I think we ought to at least do an interim evaluation after six months to a year and get a sense whether or not something is working. I think the Housing Corporation is doing that, but I would like to be reassured that they are.
That’s all I have. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. We’ll go to Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank the Member for the concerns that she’s raised. When she talks about the capacity, I believe the Housing Corporation has demonstrated that they do have the capacity, and I use the example of all the money we got for the Affordable Housing Initiative a few years ago, and we had to get all those projects on the ground. I think it was quite a task for a couple years and we managed to get all the units on the ground. I think we’re one of the only jurisdictions in the country that was able to use all the money and match all the money. We had to deal with the problem of vacant units afterwards, but we wanted to make sure that we got the product on the ground to access the money that was made by the federal government. I believe we do have the capacity.
In ’13-14, I think we’re on track to have 90 percent of our capital projects completed. Our carry-overs, I think, are getting smaller and smaller every year, so we’ve been fortunate that we’ve been able to get most of our capital on the ground, and it’s our goal to make sure that we get our capital on the ground, because the longer we delay then the longer people have to wait for these particular units.
The Homelessness Fund, the hard to house, I believe we had $280,000 that was earmarked for that. The Shelter Capital Fund, we have earmarked $100,000 for that. Now, that’s to go to help the NGOs with some repairs that might be needed. It’s application based, so again, it’s a new one and we’ll see how that rolls out.
As far as evaluating our programs, I believe we have an ongoing evaluation of our programs. I think Members are well aware in the last few years we’ve made a lot of changes, and a lot of changes we made on the fly when we realized that maybe this can work better or we can improve in this area, so rather than wait three years to say we need to improve this, we tried to initiate those improvements right away. We’ve had a number of changes to our programs over the last number of years.
The transitional rent supplement, the Member spoke to one area in particular which is basically getting a building that is free, on top of getting some money from the Housing Corporation to assist with the O and M. This was specifically earmarked for those that are going into market housing and had to pay the market rate and it was a struggle for a lot of them. This program was mostly designed for them. I think it’s working quite well. I’ve had some comments come back.
I will have Mr. Stewart touch on the standards if you don’t mind, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Stewart.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. In terms of the standards, as the Member alluded to, there is a number of pieces of legislation that help define how the shelter should operate that we think covers most of the issues that have been raised in the past. That said, though, there is certainly also opportunity in contribution agreements for specific program delivery to lay out specific approaches to operating that may address some of the other concerns. It becomes a bit of question as to whether standards and regulations of those sorts of things are the best way to tackle those issues, or whether it is better to look at the individual contribution agreements and through the various departments that provide funding to make sure that the issues that the Members identified have been addressed. Certainly, there’s more work that could be done on that, but there are different ways to, I think, achieve the objective that I think the Member is really after here. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Stewart. I will allow Ms. Bisaro just to have one quick follow-up question. Ms. Bisaro.
Mr. Chair, it’s not really a question, but thanks to Mr. Stewart for I think hopefully indicating that this issue is going to be addressed. I can appreciate that maybe standards aren’t the only way to go, but there is a concern for the safety of the people that are working in some of the homeless shelters.
I did forget to mention that I’ve noticed in the mission, as I looked at the mission for the Housing Corp, there’s no mention of homelessness. Now that we have a homelessness coordinator housed within the Housing department, I wonder if the Housing Corporation would consider changing their mission slightly to address the issue of homelessness since you are now responsible for that. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We would be willing to do that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Moving on with general questions, I have Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the Minister and his staff for exchanging some information with us today. It’s been over two years, I guess, since we’ve been working with the Housing Corporation. I just want to commend the Minister and his staff on the improvements and hard work that they’ve done. It’s been very noticeable. I know we get a lot of good feedback within committee after our exchanges or meetings that we do have, so that’s been great.
First off, I just want to talk about some of the investments into our public housing stock as well as the transitional housing and Shelter Capital Fund. We have a good program going on in Inuvik right now that just started up with very minimal dollars, so it’s nice to see some of these dollars that are put in here for the upcoming budget that Inuvik can be possibly one of the leading groups that are working with very little to provide shelter for those that need it. So, I am very happy to see that in the budget.
There is also mention of improved energy efficiencies, and speaking with a couple of constituents back home that are interested in this area, it’s nice to see that it’s still looked at and there is support out there to see what we can provide in communities where we can provide some of these energy efficiencies.
The Minister did mention earlier about giving Members an update or just a briefing note on the evictions of people in the communities, constituents. I for one deal with some of that on a regular basis, but just getting the whole briefing note and understanding how hard the LHOs and how hard the Housing Corp has worked to try to keep people in their homes in most cases and working out every last bit of possible avenue to help people get through it. I think there were 30 cases that he mentioned that are going to court in terms of the mortgage arrears. I know this government and this department is working hard to address those issues.
Members made comments of the Transitional Rental Supplement Program. I won’t get into that any further, but it’s nice to hear that it’s still being utilized and there are people that are getting into that.
I don’t have a whole lot to say about this Housing Corp. There’s been a lot of good work over the last two years and I know committee can also preach to that.
The Minister does know that I did have a constituency concern just recently, as of yesterday and today. It brought attention to this new act that Alberta has just passed. It’s the new Home Buyer Protection Act. That just deals with mandatory warranty programming and it will actually hold the builders more accountable when they are building some of these houses in Alberta. I want to ask the Minister if we have anything similar here in the Northwest Territories that would hold people that are building our dwellings and housing in the communities more accountable, especially with the plan to build 100 units over the next three years. It might be something to look into and see if there is any way that, as a government, we can legislate some type of act that would hold people building these units more accountable. Obviously, we want to make sure that we have proper housing units that will house people in the communities, but as we look to bring more people in from down south, that they have proper housing.
One other question that was brought up that is just how does the department write off and certify a housing unit when it’s built and ready for move-in. Do we have a proper inspector with proper regulations to sign off on those units? Obviously, we are going to have 100 units built over the next three years, so we want to make sure that we have all these things in place.
I just want to make a comment, and I think Mr. Menicoche made comments about the shelter and some of the vacant units in our small communities. Committee did hear from some Members that some of our residents going through some kind of treatment program outside of the Northwest Territories not having the proper support or having some kind of halfway house when they come back to the community for support, and whether or not an NGO can take over one of these vacant units to have some kind of transitional program in a small community, or regional community, for that matter, where they continue to get the support that they need. I know Yellowknife has quite a bit of opportunities or resources in that aspect, but even visiting those facilities here in Yellowknife there is also a definite need for more operations and more workers, as Ms. Bisaro said, and the safety as well.
Just some general comments. A couple of big issues there towards the end, but all in all the Housing Corporation has done a great job, and working with them since the beginning of the 17th Assembly there have been a lot of good improvements and the communication has been one of the better ones with departments. Just general comments. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. We will go to Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments on the work that the Housing Corporation has done. As I said on a number of cases, we have come up with a lot of initiatives and then we task our officials with doing all the work and they do a very good job.
The public housing stock, we are placing I think 39. You notice, when we do talk about our public housing stock, we always talk about replacement. We are not adding any new public housing on. If we put 39 in, we will more than likely be taking 39 out, some of our older units because we do have a lot of old units out there. Part of that is as a result of the declining CMHC funding.
We still are hoping to meet with the new federal Minister of Housing with my colleagues across the country. We are co-chairs of the Federal/Provincial/Territorial Ministers of Housing, so we need to get some face time with the new Minister. I think he had committed to Premiers, when they were at Niagara-on-the-Lake, that he was going to try to get together with the Housing Ministers. That’s something we’re working on right now.
The application-based program through the homelessness, I believe the particular one that the Member was raising, I believe they have an application in and it’s just in the process right now. I think we do support two or three initiatives in the community of Inuvik, accessing some of this money, but I believe the new one has… I see your colleague is giving you a hard time about that. Actually, I think there are none in Inuvik and 10 in Yellowknife.
---Laughter
We’re reviewing the application right now.
Again, I appreciate the Member’s comments. I think it’s something that the message is starting to get out there. I always say that Housing didn’t just wake up this morning and decide they were going to evict somebody today. In a lot of cases, it’s a year-long process. I’ve heard the saying that we don’t evict people, people evict themselves, and I believe that. It’s almost a year-long process and they’re given a number of chances to try and stay out of being evicted. Some of them will take us up on it and they will honour it. There are some that will use all those avenues at their disposal and then it comes to an actual eviction, and I think that’s when Members of the Assembly hear from them, is when the actual eviction is taking place, so we like to provide Members with a small briefing outlining the chronology of events that took place to lead up to the actual eviction.
With the home warranty, the units that we built, our technical people will inspect those homes and ensure that they’re built according to the Building Code and according to our specifications. They will normally carry a one-year deficiency warranty. For people who purchase homes – and I think that was the case in this event, that home was built and this was the second owner, they weren’t buying it from the actual builder, they were buying it from someone else who had it built – part of the responsibility would fall on the homeowner that’s buying the unit to ensure that they have a proper inspection done. I think we’ve gone above and beyond in a lot of the cases, where some of the houses we’ve built and maybe two years later somebody says this isn’t working, our folks will go back in there to ensure that it’s working. Again, it’s something that we need to work on, but I know for the units that we’re having built – and the Member mentioned the 100 units that we’re doing over the next three years – of course we’ll ensure that they go through a rigorous inspection process to make sure that we’re getting a good quality product. In most cases it’s a one-year warranty afterwards. So, we will do what we can to ensure that the public dollars we spend on these units is well spent. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Moving on with general comments, I have Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I also have found some very good and positive changes in the Housing Corporation, which I appreciate. I know the Minister has excellent staff. I like to share the credit and think that committee has also contributed. In fact, he has staff who listen well and he himself listens well and reacts positively. I think working as a team, big stuff can happen.
I have a number of questions just on the energy front, and I know that’s always an ongoing challenge of putting in some better monitoring to see what the effectiveness of our actions are and stuff like that, which I appreciate.
Heat and power costs I see are up by another $1 million this year in this budget, so there’s obviously still room for improvement. We’d like to see those go down, moving to renewables and energy efficiency. Specifically, I know solar water heating is a demonstrated technology. I know our solar plan seems to emphasize, almost exclusively, electricity, but some of our biggest gains have been made through the water heating and, in fact, solar water heating. In fact, I know that the Minister has staff with expertise and enthusiasm on this I think in Hay River. I think that’s an untapped resource that the Housing Corporation could be thinking about there. Would the Minister look into that?
He mentioned, I think in response to my colleague Mr. Dolynny, the question on hot water heaters. We have about 90 electric hot water heaters right now and I think the key question is what did we have last year at this time, so if the Minister has access to that information, that would be a clear indication of progress.
On the housing for devolution, it’s tough for our communities – the professionals, housing, teachers, health professionals and so on, and now with devolution and decentralization – so I recognize there’s an issue there. The government is putting substantial money into that. Can the Minister give me assurance that this is not detracting from providing housing to those members of the public that need housing in a more serious way? They don’t have a job that takes them into the community, for example. This is market housing. Obviously, there’s no such thing in small communities, so I’m wondering: does that mean they will actually be paying the costs of this and that we will be recovering the costs of this housing?
The next area I have questions are in my constituency work I found that there are often differences between support programs in Education, Culture and Employment versus the Housing Corporation. One example that I’d like to see is the Housing Corporation change their policy – and I’ll be raising a reverse situation with ECE later – is children as dependents. ECE is satisfied that children are dependents whether or not they’re adopted. If in fact, in reality, they are the people who are the guardians and caregivers for our children, they don’t have to be adopted. The best example is quite frequently in our Aboriginal cultures, of course, are grandparents. When they’re looking after children, the Housing Corp refuses to acknowledge the number of children unless they’re adopted, unlike ECE which does acknowledge them. This is problematic, so if I can ask the Minister to look into this and hopefully revise the policy so that they’re in line. These are the sorts of things we’re hoping to get through the Anti-Poverty Strategy and so on, but this cross-departmental stuff is just tough to do, so I’m trying to raise some very specific examples.
Another issue that I’ve come across is the way people are prioritized for public housing, specifically people in transitional housing versus the homeless. Right now people in transitional housing are put on some… They’re not even put on a list, as far as I know. They’re supposed to be put on the list for housing. Often the transitional housing is inappropriate. It’s sort of an emergency basis. Here’s something transitional. Meanwhile, they’ll sit there and sit there and sit there, but somebody homeless will say I need a house and they’ll get the house. What would you expect to happen? Well, in fact it does. These families are making themselves homeless so that they can get on the darn list for public housing, and putting their families at risk. I’ve had this happen repeatedly with my constituents, families that are split up and couch surfing, camping in less than secure situations and so on. If we’re putting people in transitional housing, let’s make them a priority for getting them into housing and prevent them having to make themselves homeless because they can’t take it anymore, because they’re not in appropriate housing, in order to try to get on the list.
I think another opportunity, and I know this department does listen and does try and deal with these. I am hopeful on this stuff.
There are still a few remnant issues from the days of ECE looking after public housing subsidies and they are remnants. I think the department has done a good job in dealing with the bulk of things, but nevertheless, there are remnant issues out there where, for example, clients or previous clients were inappropriately assessed where they did not take the paperwork that was given them and deal with it appropriately, or where the family moved out of public housing and it wasn’t recorded so they continued to be assessed at full cost now because there wasn’t any communication. These are wearer issues and remnant and historical. Often the paperwork is not there.
Now, I have been successful at getting some adjustments where paperwork does exist, but there are cases now where the paperwork doesn’t exist, but there’s a record of not taking appropriate action and being accurate by the Housing Corporation. That’s admitted where their people delivered, not necessarily Housing Corporation staff but the LHO. So again, an issue that could use some resolution. We’ve been doing major things to resolve these things in a big way, a systemic way. So this is clean-up stuff.
The last thing I wanted to mention was the apprentices that the Housing Corporation has. It has been a program I’ve always supported, always expressed an interest in, always appreciated information on it. If, once again, we could get an annual sort of report on where we’re at with apprentices, how many we have in what trades and specifically what’s happened to the ones that have sort of graduated out of the system and become full-fledged journeyman or whatever. I also notice a specific budget now, I think $127,000, a one-off thing perhaps or the start of a new program. I wouldn’t mind hearing a little bit about that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. We’ll go to Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, the Member was talking about sharing the credit, and I think I’ve given credit to committee in committee and I’ll do it publicly. A lot of the initiatives that we’ve worked on I think would be very difficult to put through if we didn’t have the support of committee and this Legislative Assembly. So that support is much appreciated.
The housing for devolution, as the Member called it, we’re looking at it as housing for staff in the communities and it won’t be just specifically earmarked. It’s not taking away from the work that we’re trying to do. We have 100 units that are identified for housing for staff. We kind of have an initial allocation right now. It’s not finalized yet, we’re working with that. As well, we still have the incentive program that we’re trying to work with the communities so they can provide some housing as well. I mean, I can assure the Member and this Assembly that these aren’t just specifically earmarked for any devolution positions that might be going to the communities. We just wanted to ensure, and I think as a government wanted to ensure, that there was some options available to those that might be moving into the community where positions might be available and we didn’t want to see anybody not wanting to go there because of issues with housing. So we’re trying to address all the issues we’ve had with housing in trying to improve on the stock we have in the community. We’ve improved some of the incentives that we’ve offered to developers to try and get them to put some units in the communities. So there’s a lot of work that’s ongoing there.
The children as dependents, now I’m not sure how it would work today because children are dependents, and I don’t know if the Member is specially talking about public housing units, but that has no effect on their rent or anything like that unless they were over 18 and they were employed, then that would be part of their household income. Pardon me?
---Interjection
Size of unit, yes. They would know, yes, I suppose, if they’ve got four or five kids under their care, but I’ll look into that and see if the Member has any specific cases that he may want to share with me that brought this question about, then I’d be pleased to hear them. But as far as the actual assessment of rent itself, it has no bearing.
The transitional housing, we’ve had some success with this program and I think it’s helping people. The Member is talking about I think going from transitional housing. I’ll have Mr. Stewart add on to that in a minute.
The hot water tanks, I can’t remember the amount that we had last year, I don’t have that information in front of me, I will dig it up and share it with the Members of the Assembly and members of committee, but again, as I said before, with 216 major retrofits that are happening, I’m sure a good portion of those 90 will be hit by the 216. So we’ll have an updated list for the Members.
ECE, I believe we’ve hit pretty well every assessment that was done. I was sure we were at 100 percent of the ones that have provided the paperwork. As far as not having the paperwork to validate their information, I mean, it would be awfully difficult for us to go back and make some adjustments, but the ones that have been able to provide the proper documentation, we have been able to make some adjustments and I believe in one case somebody that left, they’re going from $8,000 to zero. So a lot of it was on them providing the proper documentation. Again, I’ll follow up on that and if the Member has any specific cases that we can have a discussion about afterwards, I would be pleased to hear those.
So the apprentices, we’ll provide some information. I think we do have a one-pager that I would be more than happy to provide to committee. We’re quite proud of that program. We’ve had a lot of folks that have gone through that, we have a lot of them that are certified housing maintainers. We continue to support that and I think the Members of this Assembly continue to support that, so we look forward to that ongoing.
I will have Mr. Stewart, with the chair’s indulgence, touch on a couple of things. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Stewart.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just very quickly on a couple of the issues raised by the Member. Prioritization in terms of allocation of units, we do have a standard system that we use that allocates people to available units. We do give extra points on that system for people that are in homeless situations or people that are in family violence situations, for example. I think that’s reasonable in terms of, you know, those are situations that you want to try to address as quickly as possible compared to others that maybe have housing that they would like to get into their own unit but that aren’t ideally housed, so to speak. But certainly something like our prioritization system is something that I’m sure we’d be happy to talk with committee about in terms of how it works and the type of points associated with it.
The Member also touched on the extra funding, I believe, that was identified for training and support for our LHOs, and we really think that’s an important piece of the LHO funding model in terms of regional workshops we’ll have and having LHOs the opportunity to get additional training but also to learn from each other. We’re going to be rolling those out in the new fiscal year. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Stewart. Moving on with general comments, I have Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a few comments to the opening remarks and the budget for housing as a whole.
I’m glad to see they’re planning to actually replace some new stock in the communities. This year I believe there 19 older public units that are going to be replaced. I hope that one of those units is Bennett Apartments in Aklavik. I believe that is older than I am. I recall in the ‘80s when I went there for the Northern Games, that building was there and I believe it is time to make changes to that.
Also, as I’ve explained, there are a lot of people moving back in the riding that I represent. I’m not too familiar with other ridings, but in Tsiigehtchic, Aklavik and McPherson there’s a big waiting list of people that are trying to get units, and I believe that there is a need for market rental units, and I hope that those communities are put on the list when the time comes.
I’m actually glad to see that the Joe Greenland Centre is in the books for this year. I’m glad to see the department is actually putting something into the community rather than taking stuff out like other departments. Also, the community would really like to see these kinds of projects actually taken on by the residents of the community just to provide more jobs. One thing that we’ve noticed when outside contractors get the work is that they bring in workers from out of town but the people in the communities just would rather not have that. They’d like a lot of that funding to stay within the community and boost the economy of the community.
Also, one thing that was mentioned through our tour, as you recall, is some questions towards a shelter. Some funds that were allocated through there that the community wanted to access to provide meals for the residents that are having troubles. I think that’s very important to work with the community on.
The other thing was one thing that is working really well, working with the Arctic Energy Alliance for homeowners, was the wood stove program. We’re hoping that more units, you know, as we try to cut down on the consumption of fuel, that we work with a lot of the homeowners to ensure that they have wood stoves or pellets put into the homes just to… It’s also good to have a backup, say, if the power goes out, especially in the smaller communities and even the larger centres. It’s good to have a wood stove in your house, because you go three or four hours without heat in your home and the pipes start freezing up and we’ve seen that in a lot of the communities. A few years back in Fort McPherson, we had the whole power plant burn down and that was a big strain on the community, but the community did pull together and they recovered. It’s always good to plan for those sorts of situations.
As I mentioned, a lot of good programs that are coming within this fiscal year, and as I mentioned, I hope to see a lot more homes. I’d like to commend the department, as I did last year on the job that has been done in one of the communities, Aklavik. All the units there have been completed and people there are very happy with those new homes that they’re now living in. As I mentioned, there’s a big waiting list there and we hope to increase that amount of availability.
With that, I’d just like to thank the chair and thank the department.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We appreciate the Member’s comments on the work that the NWT Housing Corporation is doing and we look forward to getting this project in Aklavik done. We are pleased that the community had chosen the same spot as the previous one, and having been there just recently, I see that one is down. I think we’re doing the work on the tender documents now and we’re hoping to have those out and have the contract awarded.
You talk about local employment in some of the smaller communities. A lot of the M and I work that the community does is an opportunity for employment, as far as some of the contracts go. Most of the contractors in the smaller communities now have proven that they do have the capacity to bid on a public tender and, in most cases, win it, because being from the community they have an advantage. I hear your concerns, though, about contractors coming from out of town, but at the same time, we want to make sure that we get a good price on our product and make sure we get our product on the ground in a timely manner, because we want to be able to have folks move into these places as quickly as possible. We continue to work on that though.
The waiting list in some of the communities, and I think one of the communities in your riding was identified, because we work closely with the NWT Teachers’ Association in trying to identify some of their communities where they feel that they have a lot of trouble getting teachers in there, for example, because I think they did a review of their housing situation in a lot of the communities working with our folks, and one of your communities was one of the ones that was identified as one of the communities to have challenges providing units to professionals that come in. We take that information and we use that as a guide to help us determine that, well, we should maybe get four units into this community and two units into that community and a few more over there, and that will alleviate some of the pressure. That was very valuable work that went on there.
The power outage that you had in McPherson, you talked about the wood stoves, and we like to see our homeowners with wood stoves because, you’re right, Mr. Blake, with the high cost of fuel and electricity and that and the fact that the power goes out, you need to have a backup. If the homeowner wants to put a wood stove in their place, again, they would have to deal with the insurance issues on that.
You were talking about the power outage in Fort McPherson and the power plant burning down, and it was interesting how all that came about, because I was working in Inuvik, and they just happened to have a workshop in Inuvik where they brought all the maintenance workers from the communities into Inuvik and then the power plant burnt down, so all the boys were shipped from Inuvik. Well, they volunteered to go up there, and they spent a couple days up there just going from unit to unit running the generators and making sure that they had some heat. Unfortunately, the power plant burnt down, but at the same time, we had boys from some of the High Arctic communities that were in Inuvik that were up in McPherson assisting, so it was a real team effort not only from the residents of McPherson, who were pretty good, but from the Housing Corporation, and it just worked out that all our boys were in Inuvik at about the same time. That was a good news story there. I know in the housing office in Inuvik they still have the letters up from the Minister of the day commending them and all the other employees on the work that they did.
I think I’ve touched on a number of points that the Member raised. I hope I didn’t miss anything, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Moving on with general comments, I have Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a few comments to the Minister. I do appreciate Housing’s list of seniors units into the small communities, and Fort Good Hope being listed as one of them, and the community of Colville Lake being listed also for a unit up in their area. The homeowners in our communities, there are quite a bit of them in our region: 38 percent, according to the stats that I’ve got, in Norman Wells that own their own homes; 41 percent in Tulita own their own homes – I’m just doing some of my work here – and 36 percent in Deline own their own homes. You can see that there are a high number of homeowners. Fifty-seven percent in Fort Good Hope own their own homes, and in Colville Lake the number is quite high there, too, at 86 percent. But also in Colville Lake there’s 77 percent, just the latest numbers. It might be better than 77 percent of their households in Colville Lake are in core need. When you look at core needs, you look at three criteria that fit the core need. Tulita, 37 percent of core need. These numbers are still 55 percent of households in Fort Good Hope are in core need. When you look at and examine the core needs of these houses, they are quite high and I understand that there are programs set out for them and to lower the core needs in our smaller communities.
I guess what I’m saying is some of the people, either in homeownership or in the public housing units, sometimes it’s quite difficult to get equipment and material in there, and people are pretty busy, especially in the last couple of months with the cold weather coming in and freeze-ups of pipes, water pressure pumps and sewer pipes. On top of that, you have leakage on the floor. Is there an annual really in-depth inspection of these units with the wood floor chipping away because of leaks in the bathroom or the kitchen dripping water throughout a continuous period of months or weeks? I would like to know if each household gets a pass inspection from the health that there is black mould, or people don’t really know sometimes if it is black mould or just something else.
I get calls. There are repair units that people are living in that sometimes you see boards over the floor that is rotten. The boards are there and they show it to me. Things like that they have in some of these public house units.
My point is there is a high percentage of homeowners, also, that get quite challenged by having to purchase their own material and supplies because you can’t pick up the phone and ask Housing for the guy to come up with a van and work. They have to do it themselves. In small communities it’s quite expensive, so they would like to see some kind of relief, especially for the older people to have someone they can call in the community. It would be good if you have that. I know it is quite difficult, but it is also nice to have somebody from the government, a maintenance person, to come and help these people to have their equipment. I had to do that over the holidays and get my own equipment when it’s 55 below outside. It’s not fun.
I want to ask the Housing, is that something that is discussed or talked about? One of my neighbours across the street, who does he call? He is an elderly person. He owns his own home. If his pipes are broken, he has to buy his own pipes from Norman Wells or from outside the community. Those are just some of the unique challenges. I’m not too sure if it is being put into any type of discussion with the Housing Corp.
You have enough houses already to look after; it’s a lot of housing. This is added stress, but it’s also more for the people who own their own homes. I’m very interested in having the Sahtu be considered as one of the hard to house because we have some people in Deline who are very challenged and it makes it quite hard for them to get into a house. Actually, we have a young man – I just talked to and let the Minister know – that is living in his own shack. He made his own house out of crates from the housing packages. This young man is challenged because he is disabled. The doctor said he can’t be out in cold weather, but he’s so bad in arrears that he just kind of gave up on life and that’s what he was trying to do, but he survived. Now he is in a little shack in 40 below. It is really difficult, because of our policies and programs, to get him into a unit. He has to wear a scarf over his face. It’s too dangerous for him to be out in the cold weather and he’s still in that situation. I guess for myself, I am requesting a hard-to-house unit in the Sahtu for this one, look at a community that I would ask that he be given some consideration.
I brought up this black mould and mildew because I had a couple of people from my community come and talk about that. We weren’t too sure. They’ve taken some pictures. It is very difficult to get the nurse involved because she doesn’t really get involved with that type of situation. Is there an environmental or health person that comes around and says, I want to inspect the houses, not just the housing, but I want to do it from the South, inspect the housing around our small communities, looking for black mould or mildew? How do we clean that up? People get sick. I’m really concerned about that.
Overall, when I look at the Housing operations and their efforts to help those with all the unique challenges in our communities, especially in the Sahtu, they have come a long way. It’s not bad planning they have, trying to capture everything we could do with the money that we have. I look forward to seeing some of the infrastructure being built in our small communities. I think that people in the communities would appreciate it.
I guess the bottom line is, is there any type of an apprenticeship program that we can increase in our communities for electrical, plumbing, pipefitting, to maintain a house that we can get our young people to work? Does the school offer any type of training so the kids can learn the trade and they can help the elders out or help their grandparents out? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is talking about the homeowners in the Sahtu. If you look at the number of homes that are in the Sahtu, initially those homes were provided by the NWT Housing Corporation or with assistance from the NWT Housing Corporation. We contributed greatly to homeownership not only in the Sahtu but across the Northwest Territories.
The Member talks about core need. Again, core needs is kind of a tough one to gauge. If you look at the numbers from the last one done in 2009, I think it said that – I can’t remember exactly what the numbers were – 35 percent was core need. Again, we have to make sure that information is accurate, because if you came and asked me is there anything wrong with your house, I can find something wrong with my house, so that’s going to affect the core need percentage in a house.
He talked about inspection of units. We have condition ratings that are required to be done on our housing units every year. It’s done every year. They go in, they inspect the unit and identify any potential work that needs to be done and any potential issues that might be coming up. Again, I think the Member was using this in reference to homeownership. Again, if you look at homeownership, it would be their responsibility to ensure that they do the inspections on their house. We have programs in place like the preventative maintenance program, the SAFE program, which is a bit of an emergency repair program, and CARE program. If they identify some issues that needs to be done, they put an application in and our technical people will go work with them to make sure they identify work that needs to be done and they help them with it. Nowhere else in the country is that opinion available to a lot of homeowners.
I’m a firm believer in putting the onus back on the homeowner to identify. I always think of the story where an 85-year-old lady had crawled underneath her house to work on her own sewage tank because it was her house. She felt it was her responsibility, so she did that.
Again, we have a number of programs in place that assist people in the Northwest Territories. If they feel that there is a potential issue with their unit, then they would contact our district office. We’re hoping that with the new way we do business, they would contact the local housing authority and do a lot of the application process through them. Then if there is technical work that needs to be done, our technical people would come in and help identify that.
As far as mould goes, mould is getting to be an issue and a lot of it is how we maintain our own units. That has something to do with it. We were starting to see more and more people… In one of our district offices, we have someone there who is a qualified mould technician. We’re hoping to have those. After a recent visit to one of the communities in the Mackenzie Delta, they had some concerns there with potential mould. I think it was the very next day our mould remediation person went over there to inspect the unit. I haven’t heard the outcome of that yet. I am quite interested in hearing about that.
With mould being an issue, we are starting to see more and more people with expertise privately and within the corporation and we plan on utilizing that. A lot of it is education. We try to put a document out there to say this is what you may need to do to prevent mould.
As far as the transition housing goes, the hard-to-house units that we’re doing, it’s our intention to try to spread these units all across the Northwest Territories to make sure everyone benefits from them. Again, we haven’t decided where these are going yet. We will work with the communities and see which communities have high need. I am sure we will hear from a lot of communities across the Northwest Territories. Again, this is four units this year and we can maybe consider this a bit of a pilot project to see how this goes over and then go from there. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I believe I have touched on everything Member was asking.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Moving on with general comments, I have Mr. Bouchard.
I move that this committee now concludes consideration of the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation financial summary information and all related information items in Tabled Document 22-17(5), Northwest Territories Main Estimates, 2014-15. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. We’ll just take a minute and circulate this motion. The motion is in order.
Question.
Question has been called. The motion is carried.
---Carried
I’d like to thank the Minister today and our witnesses, Mr. Stewart and Mr. Anderson, for joining us. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you could please escort the witnesses out of the Chamber.
Thank you, committee. Just for the record, with this motion we have concluded consideration of Northwest Territories Housing Corporation. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you. Moving on with our agenda, we have Health and Social Services. With that, we will go to the Minister of Health and Social Services for opening comments. Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you for this opportunity to appear before Committee of the Whole to present the Department of Health and Social Services’ main estimates. The proposed operating budget for 2014-2015 is $391.929 million, which represents an 8 percent increase from the current fiscal year.
This budget includes $19.1 million in forced growth and $16.5 million in key initiatives. The initiatives increase our investment in a number of areas that target priorities identified by the 17th Legislative Assembly.
Our system continues to face many challenges, including fiscal sustainability, an aging population, changing patterns of chronic disease and the need to keep up with emerging technology. Investments in this budget will help to address these challenges and move us towards our goal of better health, better care and a better future for NWT residents.
Sustainability of the health and social services system is an ongoing concern. We face constant increases in cost and demand for services to meet the needs of our clients and patients. Members of this Assembly have raised concerns about deficits in health and social services authorities. This budget includes $15 million in forced growth that will help to address ongoing pressures in the system, including providing our authorities with appropriate funding for standby and callback pay. Three point two million will address a base deficiency in Stanton Territorial Hospital’s medical travel budget. Five point two million has been added to the budget to address increased costs of children and adults accessing residential placements outside of the NWT.
Funding to support our work in shared services and innovation will also promote sustainability in our system as we move towards achieving efficiencies by sharing expertise and resources among health and social services authorities. One million three hundred thousand dollars in funding to bring Stanton Territorial Health Authority and the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority will help lay the foundation for moving all authorities to a common financial system as well as being an essential stepping stone towards implementing a territorial electronic medical record.
We know we can deliver better care by improving access to services to our residents. The budget includes funding to roll out the Med-Response system. Beginning later this year, this program will provide regional and community health workers with immediate access to physician support, using phone and telehealth technology. This will ensure an immediate response to community medical emergencies, including coordination of medevacs. The budget also includes funding to expand midwifery programming in the NWT.
But we can’t focus only on how we deal with people when they need our services. To achieve better health for our population, we need to invest in prevention and promotion. This budget includes funding to improve the overall health and well-being of our people through three major initiatives focusing on anti-poverty, early childhood development, and mental health and addictions.
The budget includes $500,000 in new funding to support communities, Aboriginal governments and non-government organizations in tackling poverty in our communities. It includes $1.5 million to implement our Early Childhood Development Action Plan. We absolutely agree that focusing on healthy child development in the zero to three age group remains a top priority and that we must implement and strengthen a number of programs to support this age group. We also realize that those in greatest need are the families most at risk. They are often the ones who do not take advantage of facility-based programs, whether they are offered in a health centre, a child and family resource centre or a daycare program. If we are going to truly make a difference, we need to find ways to improve our ability to reach the parents and caregivers who are in greatest need of support; including pregnant moms, and parents and caregivers suffering from addictions issues.
Lastly, we continue to invest in Mental Health and Addictions. We continue to make progress on our action plan, including offering a broad continuum of treatment services to meet as many unique treatment needs as possible. We are exploring new options for addictions treatment in the NWT using existing infrastructure, from community-based services to specialized residential addiction treatment options. We have been working with an established treatment centre to pilot a mobile addictions treatment option, and are expanding the availability of day programs and after-care. We are exploring options for re-establishing residential addictions treatment in the Northwest Territories.
A key recommendation of the Minister’s Forum on Addictions and Community Wellness was that the government support a range of on-the-land programs as part of the continuum of addictions programs. I am pleased that the budget includes $900,000 in new funding which will position us to respond to this recommendation, working in partnership with Aboriginal governments and communities.
This government has identified a number of priorities for this department. I plan to keep Members updated as much as possible as we roll out these new initiatives.
This concludes my opening remarks. I am happy to answer any questions.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we report progress.
---Carried
