Thanks to the Minister. I guess I would like to know, I appreciate that there’s a focus on wood pellet boilers, but I’d like to know, from the corporation’s perspective, whether or not there’s any focus on replacing these electric hot water heaters in thermal communities. It makes more sense to do it there than it does to do in hydro communities. Is that something that the corporation recognizes is a good energy initiative and it is on the radar? If they agree with me that it’s a good initiative, how soon will it get enacted? Thank you.
Mr. Chair, as part of our renovations when we do major retrofits, if they have an electric hot water heater, we will replace them with oil-fired. Thank you.
I guess, then, that tells me that there is no intent to go out and actively replace the electric hot water heaters in these 100 units with oil-fired. The research is very clear; it’s a savings on several fronts. I would encourage the corporation to look at the cost; it’s not a heck of a lot of money, but I would encourage the corporation to look at actively replacing electric hot water heaters with oil-fired. I think you could probably find the money to do 50 of those hundred units within this budget year if you look really carefully. That’s a comment. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thanks, Ms. Bisaro. I’ll take it as a comment, unless the Minister wants to reply. Minister McLeod.
I wanted the last word. Part of these hundred units would be some of those that would be getting retrofitted. But I can assure the Member that every opportunity we have to replace the electric hot water heaters with oil-fired, we will take advantage of it. If it’s just a matter of bringing in a few to replace them, then we will do that, too. We do realize that there is a significant cost-savings and that will bode well for the local housing authority. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. The Chair aims to please. Page 5-51, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, finance and infrastructure services, operations expenditure summary. Any questions?
Agreed.
Seeing none, 5-52, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, finance and infrastructure services, grants and contributions. I have Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d just like to thank the Minister and the department for reinstating the funding under the housing for staff. I know it was supposed to be taken out of the budget for this year, but I know through the business planning process we asked the Minister to reinstate that. I would just like to thank the Minister and department for doing that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. Minister McLeod.
I’ll thank the Member very much for his comments, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Thank you, Mr. Blake. Any further questions, Mr. Blake? Thank you. Moving on with questions on this page I have Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I wanted to ask a question on the housing for staff item as well. This was tried a number of years ago and it wasn’t really successful, so what is the corporation doing different this time around to try and get a better buy-in from communities to provide housing for professional staff? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are increasing the amount of incentive we’re offering to local developers. As well, I think we’re going to be building some of these units ourselves. We’re working very closely – we just had a meeting recently – with the NWTTA. They’re doing, I think, a survey on the communities and what their needs are. So we’re working very closely with them so we can identify the communities that they may identify and we may identify as those in most need. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. Good to hear that. I’ll look forward to an update in a year’s time and see how well this particular strategy worked.
I wanted to also ask about homelessness. I can’t let the Minister go through a budget without asking about homelessness. There is $325,000 there. It supports two programs and I hope by now that we have a homelessness coordinator, which the corporation was going to hire, to run these programs but I think also to look at what needs to be done with regard to homelessness in a larger sense.
I did note that the Minister, somewhere in here in his remarks, talked about the housing continuum from homelessness to home ownership, and I’m pleased to see that the corporation is now recognizing that we do have the continuum of housing that does include homelessness. I don’t think that wording was there before, so I’m really pleased to see that.
Do we have a homelessness coordinator hired at this point, and is there any hope that in the 2014-15 budget year we will have a bigger budget for homelessness? Thank you.
We’re just doing the interviews right now, so we’re hoping to have our homelessness coordinator on soon. As far as having a bigger budget for next year, we have to go through the budget planning cycle. We have to work with committee, and if there are opportunities there to put a little more money in this, it would have to be one that’s made with the agreement of committee and Cabinet. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. It’s been a long time coming, this coordinator position, but I’m glad we’re at the interview stage. That’s progress.
The other question I wanted to ask on this page has to do with the Transitional Rent Supplement Program. I know it’s a new program. It’s, presumably, been in place for a year. I think it was initiated in this current budget year. I don’t remember exactly which month, what time of year, but I’d like to know from the Minister when enough time would have passed when we could get some kind of an update on the success or failure of this program. Thank you.
It was implemented September 1st and our goal was to go to 175 and we’re going to phase them in. I think we’ve got 50 this year. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. So to the question of when an evaluation might be done with some kind of an update back to Members. Thank you.
As far as an evaluation, I think an ongoing evaluation and giving committee regular updates on how it’s working so far. The fact that we’ve got 50 families out there we’ve been able to help I think is a pretty good indication of how well this is probably going to work. Once we get it fully implemented, we’d be more than happy to provide committee with an update on how well it is working. Thank you.
That’s great. Thanks to the Minister. That’s all I have, Mr. Chair. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Moving on with questions I have Mr. Bromley.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I’m just wondering, there seems to be a bit of a de-emphasis on Homeownership Entry Level Program funding and maybe a re-emphasis on the Market Housing Program. Could I just get the reasoning for those adjustments?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. If you recall in the past, we did put a lot of HELP units on the ground. A lot of these HELP units in the communities were vacant because we didn’t have clients for them. I think we built a lot of them on specs that we were going to get the clients and it didn’t work out the way we had hoped, so our plan now is to… First of all, we’re not getting as many applications and clients approved as we would like, so we’ve turned a lot of these units into public housing and we’ve turned some into staff housing, we’ve rented them out wherever we can. So we realize that we may need to scale back a bit on the HELP program and put more emphasis on the other programs. That’s the reason that you see it come down a bit. Instead of building on spec and having units sitting empty, we’ll try to build where they’re most needed. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just following up on the homelessness initiatives, I just want to ask the Minister if there was any funding moving forward for the day shelter that we have in Inuvik to try to keep its doors open longer during the winter months when it does get pretty cold out there, and the people who are accessing the day shelter are having to leave the day shelter because they can’t operate it during the day because they don’t have the funding. I just want to ask if there are any dollars that would be allocated so the doors could be open, specifically during the winter months when it’s cold outside. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The new homeless shelter did get some money to operate the program out of there. As far as the exact amount, it’s not on here but they did receive some money to operate a soup kitchen. Thank you.
Would the Minister be willing to look at the dollars that were allocated and rather than just the O and M costs, be looking at providing more funding, specifically over the winter months when these guys are accessing the day shelter so they are able to spend the days in the day shelter, so they can keep their doors open. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
A lot of the programs, and most of the ones that were approved, were applications that we had received from these groups and we reviewed all the applications and disbursed the funding. We work with them and will probably get an application in. Thank you.
Just moving further, Mr. Chair, at the Beaufort-Delta Regional Council meeting that was held in January, I know the leadership approved and supported moving forward with a women’s shelter in Tuktoyaktuk. I believe the building they have now was constructed in the 1960s and requires a lot of renovations and upgrades on a consistent basis. They are looking at getting new infrastructure for the women’s shelter. I just want to ask the Minister if he has that on the books and if it was something the Housing Corporation was looking into in the foreseeable future or near future. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
A lot of the issues that we hear from the groups that we meet with across the Northwest Territories, Housing always has it on its radar. It’s just a matter of working with them to try to find some common ground. I can tell the Member that with the concern that was in Inuvik, I know staff up there are working with the folks up in Tuk to see what we would be able to do. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Colleagues, we are on page 5-52, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, finance and infrastructure services, grants and contributions, contributions. Any questions?
Agreed.
Thank you. Moving on to 5-55, NWT Housing… Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don’t think it’s any surprise that we have a waiting list for public housing and housing support. Certainly in the Yellowknife area we have a couple of offices, and Yellowknife Housing apparently has a list of 160 or so, also the YWCA has another list of 150 or so. I don’t know if there might be overlap on those at all, but I know these are real. These are exceptional, these are recent and the staff are saying something is going on, we don’t see this sort of thing. What do we do to monitor a waiting list and what can the Minister report on now? Is there any insight yet on the Yellowknife situation? I know the Minister is aware of this. What are we doing to get on top of this? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’ve heard the concern about the waiting list in Yellowknife. I know some of the communities have waiting lists, not quite as large as here. We are planning on doing some work. After we had our briefing the other day, we went back and I was thinking about some of the people who were on a waiting list and I do know that if the requirement, I believe, for some of them that are accessing income support or having income support pay their rent in place they are living now, I think the requirement is to be on the waiting list of the local LHO. So we were planning on doing – and I talked to a couple of Members – some work there to see on the waiting list how many of them are actually in a unit or on the waiting list because they need to be on the waiting list to qualify for some of the programs. So we are going to undertake that work. I’ve seen a couple of the waiting lists. I’ve seen a waiting list of a place that I know quite well, and a lot of people that were on the list are living in units but ECE is paying their rent, and part of the requirement is you have to be on the waiting list with the LHO. So we are going to undertake some work and find out how much overlap there is, and I believe we could come down by probably 30 or 40 percent. Thank you.
I appreciate the Minister. I know he has mentioned this before. I think I’m starting to get some understanding of what he’s saying here. I think that’s important information to have, an important perspective. Obviously, it still leaves a considerable number of people on the waiting list.
Just to back off to sort of a larger-scale situation, I think it would be really good to try and have our fingers strongly on the pulse of where our people are at in terms of being on waiting lists across the territory. Will the Minister take on to come up with some sort of automated mechanism whereby we can monitor that situation, at any one time know what the situation is and where we are starting to have a situation develop because of resource development there or whatever the case might be? Who knows what might cause those sorts of changes. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, through the information system, we will be able to plug in to the communities. I think we are going to have a pretty good indication of what their waiting lists are like, so we will be able to monitor it a lot closer.
Again, as I was saying before, we have a lot of singles that are on the waiting lists that could be living with somebody but they are just trying to get their own place. We have to check all that information too. I believe, once we do the analysis, we’re going to find that our waiting lists of people that are actually not in a unit are going to come down quite a bit. It is just folks that are waiting to get into a unit. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, I have a last question on that aspect. Are we regularly or do we routinely, at some interval, contact the YWCA agencies that would be expected to maintain waiting lists so that we are aware of what they’re hearing and seeing on the ground? Thank you.
We don’t check with them regularly, but I can commit to the Members that we will start following up with not only the YWCA, we have 23 LHOs out there. We can follow up with them on what their waiting lists are like. We have a number of communities without LHOs that we have public housing stock in. We can check with them and see what their waiting lists are like. That way we will have a whole territory-wide indication of what the waiting lists are like across the territory. We will follow up with the Y and see what their waiting lists are like. I can commit to Members that we will check in with all of these groups on a regular basis.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Before we go on to our other MLA for questioning here, the Chair would just like to take a moment to recognize someone with us watching the proceedings tonight in the House, and that is Jean-Marc Miltenberger. Welcome to the Chamber.
---Applause
Moving on with questions I have Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Just with regard to programs and district operations, I noticed that the budget looks fairly stable, down by $3 million. If you look further down under program delivery details, you see that the Nahendeh district is down, one of those 30 percent of the $3 million that this program is down. Can the Minister give me an explanation as to why that is?
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. For that we’ll go to Minister McLeod. My apologies, we’ll go to Mr. Stewart.
Mr. Chair, the information that the Member is looking at on the bottom of the page, you’ll see from the main estimates of 2012 to the 2013-14, it is down a little bit but not a lot. The revised estimates that you see reflects carry-over projects that we have that we then add to our revised estimates. If there were carry-overs in 2012-13, that will end up in a revised estimate as well. The actual, when you compare the mains to mains, it is down a little bit but not a lot. Part of that is going to be driven by our program intake which we are just finishing up now and doing approvals, and that will improve that estimate as well. Thank you.
Thank you. I was a little bit concerned whether it was district operations or programs. It sounds like it is more specific of programs there. I am satisfied with that answer.
