Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Jackson Lafferty will be absent from the House today to attend the federal/provincial/territorial Labour Ministers meeting in Ottawa.
I also wish to advise Members that the Honourable Bob McLeod will be absent from the House today to attend events related to the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. [English translation not provided.]
Mr. Speaker, between 2004 and 2009 the housing needs have grown from 16 percent to 19 percent across NWT. Mr. Speaker, that should not happen. My estimates are that the NWT Housing Corporation has in excess of $100 million per year to address social housing needs across the Northwest Territories.
In addition to that, CMHC’s affordable housing money, the NWT Housing Corporation, in my estimate, spent around $900 million to address social housing needs between 2004 and 2009.
Mr. Speaker, how does a corporation that is designed to address social housing need to spend that much money and lose ground? I can tell you how, Mr. Speaker: no strategy, no focus and simply not knowing the real needs of the small communities.
Mr. Speaker, from 2004 to 2009 the core need in Yellowknife remained constant at 9 percent and since 46 percent of the households are in Yellowknife, that means the actual core need in the other communities is actually 28 percent.
Mr. Speaker, when you remove the regional centres and Yellowknife, the needs in the smaller communities are at 42 percent. Mr. Speaker, that shows the NWT Housing Corporation is not focussed in the right areas and does not have a strategy that combats the core need issue for housing. That, after spending 800 to 900 million dollars in that time period.
Mr. Speaker, the NWT Housing Corporation needs a strategy to address core need issues for housing in smaller communities. The NWT Housing Corporation has to develop programs and policies that actually work to take people out of core need. Mr. Speaker, this type of miserable failure should not be ignored by this government. I have made many suggestions on how things could be improved. Very few of my ideas were taken seriously. I will have questions for the Minister at the appropriate time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the past few days I was in Deline and I was witness to the hand games that were played there, Mr. Speaker. This is the first annual traditional hand games that the Deline First Nation have hosted. There were 37 teams from the Yukon, Alberta and Northwest Territories in total.
Mr. Speaker, there were just over 260 to 280 hand game players. There’s about 40 hours of singing and drumming. The traditional hand games brought out a lot of excitement from the people in the tournament. People played all hours of the night.
I want to say that on behalf of the Sahtu region I want to congratulate the winner from the community of Wrigley who won the hand game tournament. Meander River came in second. To put on this type of event requires a lot of volunteers from the community of Deline, to the First Nations, to the land corporation, to all the volunteers that came out and cooked and looked after the people who came out to visit.
The hand games were a truly successful event. You could just see the culture come alive when the young kids come and play with the hand games. They educate themselves to learn about their culture and way of life, working as a team. They are being educated on how to play the game in a good manner.
The hand games are a lifelong tradition of the people of the Sahtu region. Certainly when they played, a lot of people came out to witness it. It was a fun-filled weekend and I want to say to the people of Deline and the organizers how much I appreciated being there to witness a part of our culture I’m certainly proud of.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to follow up on a return to written question asked by my colleague from Weledeh, Mr. Bob Bromley, on October 26, 2009. I have some very deep concerns about this government’s relentless pursuit of sole-sourcing contracts.
I would welcome former employees, senior managers, and deputy ministers to bid on contracts with the Government of the Northwest Territories. My difficulty is when contracts are handed over to former senior staff on what would appear to be a silver platter.
Is there not something wrong with a deputy minister who is relieved of their duties and months later handed a sole-sourced contract by the very government that let them go? Who are they hired by? Oh, that’s right, other deputy ministers. Isn’t that convenient? Where does the direction come from? Other DMs or is it a political direction to hire these former deputy ministers?
There are a number of communications and consulting firms here in the Northwest Territories. Why would we sole-source contracts to former senior staff without going to, at the very least, an RFP or tender?
The public asks us as political leaders to govern in a fashion that is fair, open, and transparent. We are the protectors of the public purse here in this Territory. With all of the latitude given to this current cabinet to sole-source contracts to former staff, it is apparent that this Cabinet just does not care about what the public thinks or what I or other Regular Members think about their addiction to sole-sourcing contracts to former senior staff. Why is this happening when the work should rightfully go to RFP? If the government listens, they might actually get a more thoughtful and better product at the end of the day.
I have some very grave concerns over the contract to coordinate the Northwest Territories cultural participation at the Vancouver Olympics. Why was this contract sole-sourced and for how much? I will have questions at the appropriate time.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Some researchers from famous American universities and large management consulting firms were interested in why public sector projects sometimes fail. They studied 75 major initiatives since World War II and found that three major problems are caused with well-meaning endeavours and it caused them to fail time and time again.
The first problem is known as design free. The project looked great in theory, but when everyone supported it and it moved forward, it certainly was unworkable in the real world.
The second problem was overconfidence. No one took the possibility of failure seriously. The budget was unrealistic, the timelines were impossible, and there certainly was no backup plan.
The third problem was complacency. This is when the government does something poorly simply because that’s all it knows. It seems to me that the Deh Cho Bridge in some fashion has plugged into these plagues in one various way or the other.
Mr. Speaker, for facts here, the legislation was passed to build the bridge back in the 14th Assembly. It was hailed at that time as a great leap forward on this particular project. Then, Mr. Handley and his Cabinet in the 15th Legislative Assembly went alone and entered into a Concession Agreement at the last hours of their government as it ticked away, and, of course, the express overwhelming confidence of this project, which in essence isn’t really on record for the fact that it’s tied the hands of this government.
Now, we all know about the glitches of the Concession Agreement along with the zero support from Ottawa, which I would define is truly the real scandal. Where is Ottawa’s help on this project?
Mr. Speaker, we know that the Minister of Transportation in our 16th Assembly is working hard to help through this project with the cost overruns, and is now, through our time-tested process, as usual, is calling upon Members to ask us for $15 million more in supplementary funding. Mr. Speaker, I will agree that in no way a 9 percent increase to this project should be viewed as a scandal in any way. It should not be painted in that fact, because most of our public projects have bigger bumps that they’ve ridden through. But, Mr. Speaker, the Deh Cho Bridge Project has been fraught with challenges from the beginning. I wonder if it ever got off on the right foot.
Mr. Speaker, our choice is clear right now. We must find a way to complete this project, the challenge before us. Mr. Speaker, I’ll have questions for the Minister of Transportation about what have we learned to make sure this project does not fall off the rails again, and certainly what is being done to get money from Ottawa to help us support this project that needs to be built as infrastructure in the NWT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One more time I’m going to stand up in the House and I’m going to speak to the accomplishments of Brendan Green, and this in the context of a day on Friday, February 26th, when Brendan will compete at the Olympics in the Men’s Biathlon Relay Competition.
Mr. Speaker, in honouring this and sending our best wishes to Brendan for this competition, people in Hay River in the schools, in the businesses and in many other places will be wearing something green on Friday. So, Mr. Speaker, although we are not allowed to have props in the Legislature, I would like today to also challenge my colleagues here in the Legislature as a show of support for our young Olympian from Hay River to possibly look through your wardrobe and if you could find something green to wear on Friday, I think that would be a tremendous show of support for Brendan, and we wish him all the best.
Just getting to the Olympics, Mr. Speaker, of course, is a tremendous achievement. I know there’s been a little bit of disappointment in some of the Canadians on the part of owning the podium, but, you know, we are still hopeful for Brendan and the Biathlon Team. But whatever they do, we will still remain very proud and supportive of his achievements to date. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. People are drawing a lot of attention lately to the cost of living. Frustration has spawned a Facebook page, public meetings, and you can’t see the news without hearing the words “high cost of living.” I want to recognize this initiative and respond to it.
The cost of living being too high means living pay cheque to pay cheque, never getting ahead of the bills, holding multiple jobs, and no savings for emergencies or the future. Fifty percent of small community households have an annual income of less than $30,000 and much of their housing is in poor or uninhabitable condition. Even people with greater incomes in lower cost communities are struggling with the high costs of today.
There are two important government responses that can significantly address the high cost of living. First, get rid of poverty. If acted upon, the House call for poverty reduction by integrating services such as child care, education and literacy training, community and individual healing will go a long way in helping both the working poor and easing abject poverty. With success, people will have greater ability to pay bills and get ahead, they will pay more taxes and start more businesses, and they will need less government support, all of which are important contributions to lowering the cost of living.
The second responsibility we have is to address one of the biggest pressures people are pointing to as the cause of their inability to meet their costs: energy bills. Energy costs are part of essentially every aspect of our lives. Fortunately, there are ways that we can provide cheaper energy that will also provide more employment and business opportunities and real environmental benefits. Rather than pursue these in a meaningful way however, government does endless reviews and opaque shifting of costs that ultimately benefits nobody.
In the coming days I will speak in depth to these shortcomings and missed opportunities for friendlier energy and how our energy supply system must be fundamentally revised to achieve meaningful advances in our fight against the high cost of living. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I said in my Member’s statement, I believe that the Deh Cho Bridge process has had many challenges. Mr. Speaker, I also want to clearly say that I don’t think a 9 percent increase on this project is a scandal, by any measure. Mr. Speaker, what I think is the true scandal of this project is where is Ottawa’s help on this potential project. I’d like to ask the Minister of Transportation, when was the last time Ottawa was asked for money to help support this project? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my information tells me that the last time a request was put into the federal government was in the life of the last government. It was brought initially forward to the Transportation people and I think the issue was then moved to the Finance department. In the government we have not sought to renew that request. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I’d like to know why hasn’t a financial contribution to this project been pursued at our ministerial or Premier level to the federal government, again, to support the cost of this project. Why hasn’t anything been pursued since? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the indications that we had from the federal government was that either this project to have to move forward as a P3, because the project had started already prior to the P3 program becoming active and having the board set up, we didn’t qualify. We had been also asked to be considering using the Building Canada funding for the bridge if we thought that his was a high enough priority. At the time it was decided that there were many other projects that could utilize the Building Canada funds, therefore, that’s where we would invest, as the bridge project already had financing arranged. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, my clear evidence of this House, many Members asked many questions repeatedly. Not just once. Not just twice. Not over one year. Not over five years; maybe even longer than that. Mr. Speaker, the point being is that many Members continue to challenge that mighty mountain by raising an issue up and saying we’re not going to give up. So has the government given up on Ottawa, and if they haven’t given up on Ottawa, when can we expect another letter asking for financial support for this particular project? Because I can guarantee you that there is no infrastructure project across Canada of this nature that would be left in the dark by Ottawa’s support. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, right now we don’t have any current plans to be formulating a request to Ottawa. We don’t see a program that would allow us to have any dollars invested from the federal government. However, having said that, I don’t think that it would stop any informal discussions with the federal Ministers to see if there are any potential avenues for them to invest. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’ve explained that I believe this is where one of our serious problems lies. Would the Minister commit to this House to work with the Premier to make sure we get a letter off to Ottawa, whether it be the Prime Minister, one of the infrastructure Ministers, whether it’s the Finance Minister? Personally, I don’t really care who. The fact is we need to make sure we get a letter to one, if not all of them, explaining how important this project is to this Territory. Would the Minister make sure, loud and clear in this House, that he’ll commit that a letter of this nature will get done right away? Thank you.
I certainly can commit to working with the Premier to see what options there are and what involvement the federal government could be requested to assist us with in this situation.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I spoke of the core need of the NWT Housing Corporation. I have questions for the Minister.
I realize that in five years, 2004 to 2009, this government has had at least six Ministers. I’m just making that point to see if the government is trying to maybe stay with one Minister to try to get things resolved.
I’d like to ask the Minister, in his year of being Minister of NWT Housing Corporation, if he has determined why the Housing Needs Survey has grown in the last five to six years.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are many reasons that the core need would rise. It’s not just a matter of putting the product on the ground. The affordability is a contributing factor; suitability of housing and adequacy. We’ve taken steps to address the core need. With the money that’s been invested by the federal government and matched by this government, we’re quite confident that within a year or two we’ll have addressed or made a serious dent in the core needs in the communities.
The Minister speaks of the money that’s going to be coming to the corporation over the next couple of years or so. Has the Minister looked at what exactly would be needed to lower core need? Has he taken a good comprehensive look at what is needed to lower core need?
We have a pretty good idea that we know what it will take to address core need. That’s why the corporation, using the money that is due to run out next year -- the federal infrastructure money is due to run out in 2010-2011 -- we’re taking steps to channel a lot of that money into the communities with the highest core need so we’d be able to address a lot of the issues, whether it be major M and I projects, which is one of the contributing factors to the high number of core need, talking about the adequacy. We’re taking steps to address that and there’s a huge investment being made in repair projects across the Northwest Territories.
The Minister speaks of a strategy and knowing what it takes to lower core need. Does the Minister actually have a strategy to address core needs in the small communities, to address the communities that have the highest core need? Has the corporation developed an actual strategy to address that issue?
The strategy that we have to address core need is to make an investment in the communities with the highest core need. We’re quite confident that will address a lot of the issues as far as core need goes. We have about a year and a half left of the federal money they have invested plus what we’ve contributed. Since 2004-2005 we’ve actually invested about $224 million into trying to address this and the money has gone to a lot of the communities that are in highest need. That is our strategy for the next couple of years, is to take what we’ve learned from the Community Needs Survey and allocate money based on the numbers that we receive.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Minister for that response. Will the Minister do a complete review of the NWT Housing Corporation’s programs and policies with means of lowering core need and developing programs that can be delivered effectively in the small communities?
We’re always looking at ways that we can bring the core need numbers down and the investment that we are making, whether it be in the public housing stock or through the Homeownership Programs. It’s an ongoing process. We’re always looking for ways that we can improve the delivery of our programs with the investment that we have. We’re quite confident that when we meet again next year for the budget session that some of our numbers should go down. The communities that need the most investment to bring their core need down will be getting the most investment. We’re quite confident that we’ll see a decline in the core need numbers. We also have to understand that affordability is a contributing factor to the core need numbers too. If the economy picks up, I think that plus the investment we’re making we’ll see the core needs start to come down.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Premier and they’re about the high cost of living today.
The group of citizens in Yellowknife, and perhaps across the Territories, are working through electronic means as well as individually and together have had a lot of press and a lot of profile. I certainly appreciate their initiative in discussing this and trying to come up with solutions.
I’m wondering what the government is doing to recognize this initiative and meet with this group of people. Have we met with them, made contact with them, and offered our perspectives and willingness to work with them?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.
