Debates of February 6, 2006 (day 23)

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am just going to go back to sort of follow what Mr. Braden is talking about. The Minister indicated that we are looking at probably 500 houses over the next three years, pending the federal government’s funding. I am just wondering, as Mr. Braden pointed out earlier, are we going to continue to deliver these houses for the next three years, as the Minister indicated? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, at our present allocation for housing, we deliver roughly about 118 houses using our budget exclusively. The additional units use the federal funding, is key. But again, I do have faith in the federal system that we have had the legislation passed. We have had dollars identified which is $1.6 billion. Out of that, CMHC has devised a way to allocate, and through the provincial-territorial housing Ministers, I believe we have had support from our colleagues in the provincial and also federal levels. I think, because I feel comfortable that we will get some positive results, but again, if we don’t get it, we will be delivering roughly about 118 houses. The goal is for 185. That is what we are hoping to deliver this year. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have just one last one here. How soon will the Minister meet with the Honourable Diane Finley in regards to the funding? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As soon as possible. As soon as I can get a phone number, give her a call, congratulate her and see how soon we can meet. So ASAP.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just for clarification in regard to the 73 public housing replacement units. I have 185. I think for clarification, if you replace 73 public housing units, that is not really addressing some of the housing shortage. How can I rephrase the question? Seventy-three replacement units; will those be new units over and above the 185? I just need clarification. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, as we all know, we do have an aging public housing stock. We do have to replace it. As you know, the funding that we have will be transferring to Education. There is a declining amount over the next number of years which will climb to zero. We have really lost our O and M to operate a lot of our public housing units. The only way we feel that we can be able to continue that is to build more energy-efficient and multi-unit construction and phase out units that are not as energy-efficient and very expensive to operate.

Also, there is a question about land and land availability in a lot of communities. We will have to reprofile a lot of these lands that are there to be able to use them for different types of construction. Again, we are looking at that. Again, we do have to replace a lot of our public housing units which basically have exceeded their usage. We do have to reallocate a lot of our O and M, so that is the reason that we are looking at replacement and finding more energy-efficient housing and also making them more energy-efficient by multi-constructed facilities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In regard to the $4.889 million emergency fund repair programs, what are some of the stipulations as to these people having a requirement to access this fund? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, as you know, we are revising our power by allocation. Right now, we have some 14 programs we do deliver. We are trying to consolidate them down to five areas. Because of the changing delivery of our programs, we are hoping it is more user-friendly and people would be able to have better access. In regards to the $4.888 million, it is application based and people will have to come forward, fill out the applications and have it approved based on the regional and community allocations. That is the process we presently use. Again, we are hoping with this change, it will make it more user friendly for people to access programs and make them simpler to understand and don’t have as many restrictions as we presently have. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can the Minister give us an idea of what you mean by user friendly for access of funds? Is there going to be an easier access for the people? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, we have heard a lot of concerns over the years from Members in this House and people in the public about how programs have basically been delivered. You heard a concern here this morning about a person getting a once-in-a-lifetime application for clients for housing and how we are able to work around this, but, presently, I mentioned, we provide something like 14 to 19 different types of programs. We are trying to basically consolidate into five general areas. I think that, by doing that, it will simplify the process for one thing, but also allow more flexibility to mix and match different programs which, right now, you have to apply on each one. Right now, we are hoping, by simplifying the program, you only have to apply in five different areas than actually having to go to every application or program that is out there. With that, we are looking forward to seeing this program being rolled out, but also seeing that we will find a system that is more user friendly to our clients. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just one last question here for the Minister in regard to the corporation plan to invest 10.439 in modernizing and upgrading the rental stock. Can he give us an example of what he means by that? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, we do what we call MNIs in communities, which are major and minor repairs to most of our public stock. It is where a large portion of this is to basically do repairs to keep our houses in certain conditions to make sure that they are not falling below certain standards. So those are basically repair programs that are done annually by the housing authority. The money has been identified for all of the communities to do repairs on their housing stock. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Next I have Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to offer some comments to the Minister’s opening statement, as well. It is fair to say that probably for all Ministers in this chamber, they are probably more anxious to talk to the newly minted Cabinet Ministers in Ottawa than they might be interested in talking to us at the moment. Such is the vital importance that the federal counterparts play for our government. We have never had a change in government like this in 13 years. Pardon me? I thought the Premier was trying to say something here. If I could just finish my statement, I am just going into a prelude here.

Madam Chair, I think it has such importance. There is nothing as important that the federal government does for us or as important as the housing. I guess it is fair to say that a lot of our funding right now for the Housing Corporation is in a bubble. Perhaps anything critical I say to the Minister will all be forgiven if he manages to secure additional housing money from the new Housing Minister.

Having said that, I think our work is two-pronged. We have to get our agreements out of the federal government, but it is also important that we manage our in house business well. The issue that I want to just start with with the Minister is to do with mandate, specifically of the Housing Corporation, but just general orientation of the Housing Corporation. I want to say of the people and the leadership of the Housing Corporation. I want to speak this in a very positive way. I am really trying to be productive and constructive as not only a Member of this House, but as a chair of the Social Programs committee because I need to tell you that the work and the mandate of the Housing Corporation has been a topic of discussion in so many different areas and not just in our committee, but in every other committee that we all sit in down the hallways. I think it is time that the Minister and the leadership -- and that includes the Cabinet -- really address their minds to the issues of housing. I don’t think there is one more important issue. Maybe after life, it is a basic shelter. Every time we go anywhere, we hear of the need for social housing in the North. The only thing that is quite simple, but vital, that we are trying to do, is to work the corporation mandate and the budget in such a way that we help to do that.

So far, what we are getting from the corporation and the latest example of trying to change the mandate, Madam Chair, speaks to and really expresses the lack of communication going on. I don’t know where that is coming from.

Madam Chair, for example, here in his opening statement, the Minister speaks to the fact that he has heard the MLAs expressing concerns that he is going to do consultation, but he just said that he is going to do it in the next two or three months and he is going to come to the committee with the findings. That is exactly the backward way of doing that. In the last six months, we have had to address letters to the Premier, Minister of Finance, to the Housing Corporation just to explain what it is that we are trying to get. I would suggest to the Minister that he probably should come to the committee first. He has six Members there. Maybe we should talk about what the terms of reference should be on this review.

Minister of Education, I don’t know how many consultations he has going. One of the things he did turned out to be that…Sometimes you can consult with stakeholders and you might find that what the people have in mind are quite different than...The Minister of Education has a consultation going on on income security. He did one on a Yellowknife facility. I think the Housing Corporation could do more to consult with MLAs and communities and LHOs about so many things that people are speaking about how we can best spend housing money.

Madam Chair, in the last business plan, in the year just passed, the Housing Corporation has seen a transfer of $30 million for income, the low-cost housing or social housing, I guess, that it is commonly known as. That was transferred to Education, Culture and Employment. That constituted a huge amount of that department’s budget. That should just tell you that that would require the corporation to re-look at what it is they are doing and how do we best address our needs and such and how do we rewrite this mandate. Yet we didn’t hear from them even still now. I cannot believe how a corporation could put a budget together and not really know exactly what their mandate should be and what the end objective is. In all of our communications, I just want to let the people who work at the Housing Corporation to know that, when we are being critical or when we are giving input like this about the mandate or changing the work of the department, it is not really geared toward the administrative body of that. It is really geared toward the leadership. The latest communication, in our frustration, that we sent to the Minister really speaks to looking at it from the bottom to the top, looking at it widely, looking at it, how do we best address the social housing. Do we do it in a corporation way? Do we do it in a department way? We want to open that up and have a really wide discussion about that. I think it is really important for somebody to say that this is not meant to be a negative exercise. This is not a blame game exercise. This is not saying anything about the staff of the Housing Corporation. I just want to really make it clear. I want to say that, as a chair and as a Member in this House, as we go forward -- and I think all of us here take this responsibility very seriously -- in terms of addressing the mandate and responsibility and the role of the Housing Corporation, that we are aiming the responsibility right at the top of the administration and the Minister and the Cabinet.

In terms of us giving them political direction and political vision about where we would like to see this very important program go forward, I would really like to see this Minister, before it is too late, to just reorient himself slightly more into the membership rather than…If he spent as much time that he does with the industry and lobbying the federal minister, which is an important part I suppose, if he spent as much time doing that as he spends time talking to us and talking to the members of the Social Programs committee or even AOC, and just not only talking to us but listening to what it is that we are saying and not make us write three different letters to three Ministers just explaining what it is, something pretty basic but vital that we are asking for, I think that, in the next three to four months, we may make some headways in that regard.

The Novel housing issue is just one more example of that. I don’t want anybody to challenge when I say that I don’t care about social housing or small communities when I ask this question or ask anything about Novel housing, but I think it is symbolic of how this Minister and this government, by and large, on this topic, deals with issues like this. They decide. The budget address of the Finance Minister said they are going to deal with social housing. On page 5, he says, on top it says they are going to deal with critical housing needs in our communities by promoting the conversion of pipeline workforce housing. I don’t believe it is the government’s role to promote an idea like that. If it is a good project, it will stand on its own and convince us, but it is not the role of the Minister or the government to promote an idea that really is coming from a third party altogether and speak to, once again, my problem with the way this Minister is dealing with this file in that he is not as open to us in the way that he should be. I am hoping that, by saying this, we will have more open and different orientation from the Minister.

Madam Chair, I do want to end with one question that was very specific that came to us during the pre-budget hearing. That is from people who are talking about the fact that rent scale has changed a lot and the rent that is being charged for existing housing is going up all the time, but that there has been not a lot of work done in renovating and enhancing those housing. I would like to know how much of new money that they are getting from the changes in rent scale is going to fixing those units up. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, just in case the Member doesn’t understand, I have been here for 10 years and housing is probably one of the biggest priorities for myself and also the ridings that represent the challenges are not just unique to my riding or the Member’s riding through the Northwest Territories. The challenge we have is a national crisis right across Canada. What we are doing here is to change the mandate to the corporation, is to find a mechanism that we are able to deliver 185 houses, being able to deliver 500 houses over three years. But in realizing that, in 1992, the federal government, through the CMHC, made a decision to get out of building social housing. It is a national problem which is this crisis we have today. That is where it originated from.

I think it is important to realize that, through this consensus style of government we have, we have to work together to find solutions to these problems. I think that, yes, I have come to committee. I have met with the federal Minister. But it is part of the process that we go through. I am not going to say that I didn’t make an attempt to go to committee, because I have. I have gone there. I wrote a letter back in October 24th. I did not get an allowance or time to meet with them until the first week of December. I think it is important for the public to realize that happens a lot in this House. We do have to go through a process. The process is a formal process to request to sit down with committee and time to be slotted for our briefings. I just want to make sure that we basically got direction back from the Premier that, because of concerns of members of the AOC, the mandate process will be dissolved to a committee which will consist of people from FMB, the Executive and ourselves, which will go out, get public consultation and then come back, which I will not be involved with to keep it at hand's length from myself and also from the department. I think the decision was made in the context that we're asking for 20 positions. Those positions, as far as I feel, are crucial to us being delivered the 500 houses over the next three years. Everybody knows we have some major challenges by way of land deliveries, by way of comments made in Members’ statements about market housing, the challenges that we face there. That was 45 houses. I think the whole area of inspections on our units, how come we don’t have people doing ongoing inspections when we are constructing our units? Again, we have only one lands officer in the whole department. In order to put down 185 houses, we need 185 lots. So I think the scope of this problem is a lot bigger than we believe. I think Members have to realize that the Housing Corporation, when I came to this House in 1995, had 195 positions. Today, they have just a little under 100. They have almost cut themselves in half since pre-division; and then division, we had 144. I think the scope of this problem, because we have allowed it to erode to where it is today, the challenges are there. A motion was passed in this House. In order to meet the 10 percent reductions to bring our core needs down by 2007, we have to put houses on the ground in order to make a difference in people’s lives. I just wanted to make that reference. But I think it has to be made clear here that I have been meeting with the opposition's Members, Jack Layton. Jack Layton is elected again in the House. My former colleague, Mr. Joe Fontana, was the Minister of Housing, is now back in the House of Commons, and also the Prime Minister of Canada, who made a crucial difference in regards to the conference in the Kelowna meeting with the aboriginal conference that took place. Again, these people are all elected back to the House of Commons. I don’t think that they will let go of something they’ve worked on by securing a funding for housing but also securing funding for First Nations people in this country. Thank you, Madam Chair. I will leave it at that.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. A technical issue. If Members take the full 10 minutes and the Minister takes another five or six minutes for questions, in fact, somebody who is waiting in line to speak, we are not going to be revolving, going to another Member every 10 minutes here. I am not sure how committee wants to deal with that, but it is just something to think about. I don’t see a quorum in the House, and this is Committee of the Whole, so I am going to use my prerogative as Chair to ring the bells to get more people in here.

---Applause

---Ringing of the Bells

Okay. Just a small mystery here now. I rang the bells because there was no quorum in the House. I am the chair. I thought I was in control of the button. The bell is turned off. I am curious who turned them off. Did Mr. Krutko turn them off? Okay. I’m sorry. I just want to know. That is just a small technicality.

---Interjection

Okay, so much for my prerogative as the Chair. Alright. Then we will resume Committee of the Whole and I will now turn the floor over to Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the Minister’s comments, I want to ask a few questions. I think the basic presumption or thing that the people in our communities are looking for is that homes be built in the whole Northwest Territories. The Minister is right and the Members are right. We seem to be always in a crisis mode in the North in terms of homes, how much get built in the regions and in the communities. I am very curious in terms of the number of homes being built in the North and maybe specifically in the Sahtu because, in the last couple of years I have been here, past reports indicate that our region had the highest number of core needs. Overcrowding causes other health factors and other consequences of these homes. I wanted to ask the Minister in terms of the homes that will get built this year and in the next couple of years out of the 185 units that are being planned. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. My apologies to Mr. Krutko. I know how the bells got turned off now. My apologies for any insinuation. I want to tell the Members that, on the list right now, I only have two more Members who have already spoken on general comments. So if you want to get on the list and have priority over those who have already had a 10-minute slot, please put your hand up. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, at the present time, roughly, we construct about 100 units a year. The Member is right; because of the needs surveys that we have done over the last number of years, we have been basically trying to ensure that we do everything possible to bring down those core needs in those communities that have high core needs. The Sahtu is one of the areas. This year, we are hoping to allocate some 35 houses. Like I say, over the next number of years, as we all know, the motion was passed in this House to bring down those core needs by 2007. In order to do that, we have to really make a difference to delivering houses in communities in the regions and also ensuring that we find a mechanism to do it. I believe that we are hoping over the next three years to really make a difference in the Sahtu region where we are hoping to construct some 94 units in the next three years which will make a difference to the people in the Sahtu. Like I say, this year, we are looking at 35; the next year 31; and the following year 28. I think, by having this many houses built in the Sahtu region, we will definitely have a handle on the housing crisis that we have in the Sahtu region. So working with the Members and also the Member for the Sahtu, I know it is crucial that we have heard concerns from Fort Good Hope in regards to their housing crisis and in communities like Colville Lake because of the access problems. Again, that is the scope of what we are hoping to deliver in the Sahtu in the next three years. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Minister. The Minister’s question mark on the federal government’s final commitment to release some of the funding for us to continue on with the housing in the Northwest Territories. I wish you luck in terms of securing that funding from the federal Minister and have approval from the Treasury Board. That’s still up in the air. We’re going to have to wait and see on that. The deal’s not done until it’s signed off and all set to go here, like other things this government has planned for the Northwest Territories.

In saying this, Mr. Minister, in terms of upgrading your rental stock, my second question, Madam Chair, in terms of the rental stock, I know in some places in our communities we are paying full price for a house that’s not up to grade or the assessment of the value of the house against the assessment of the amount of the rent. I know you’re upgrading the rental of the units. Is there any consideration of assessing the rent to the value of the place? For example, Madam Chair, some people live in the units for 30 or 20 years, yet we assess them at the full value of almost a new house and they don’t see it as fair. They don’t mind paying for good quality homes, but if the homes are in good shape. So I think there’s some consideration going out to our people in the Sahtu and also other regions of the Northwest Territories. Pay fair value for fair market unit. I want to ask the Minister if he would give some consideration to that issue. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, presently we do that. We do have a system in place where we take the condition rating of the unit and then we determine what the basic condition rating is and subtract that from the rent. The rent is based on the condition rating of the house right now, so you don’t pay the full cost. You pay based on exactly what the rate of that unit is. It is subtracted from the total price and then that’s the price that we use. So we do that right now, based on the condition ratings that we use for our public housing stock, and that’s how we come up with the rental amount.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the other one is that the Minister indicated almost $5 million going to emergency and other repair programs and various programs for seniors and disabled preventive maintenance programs and senior citizens home repairs. So I want to ask the Minister, in terms of some of these seniors’ English being a second language, how is it being communicated to them for their eligibility or the requirements for these type of programs? Or even the disabled. I know it sometimes gets tossed over to the Department of Health because they have to fund certain programs. Housing will build them, but they have to get, it will cost them some money. How will the seniors, where some of them are very independent, that they know that these funds are available and what criteria they need to apply for it. That I want to know in terms of rolling out the programs in these various avenues to get funding. So I ask the Minister that question. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, we have been working with the Seniors’ Society of the Northwest Territories. We have worked out a contribution arrangement with them where we are meeting with them with our program people, explaining the different programs and developing pamphlets and whatnot that are simpler and easier to understand. Like I mentioned, we are trying to consolidate our programs to go from 15 programs to five areas. The seniors are very instrumental in helping us with that. Also, we do have liaison officers. We’re working with communities to sign universal partnership arrangements with us to hire people in the communities to be liaison officers to go around and explain to the elders the different seniors' programs. It has been proving to be pretty beneficial in those communities where it has improved our relationship with our seniors and people with disabilities and other residents of those communities. So we have tried a few different things and it has worked. I think it’s also important that we work with the local housing authorities to be more involved with the residents in the communities, to work with the seniors, to make them aware that these programs are out there and also allow them to have access to it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, these programs are application based, so some of these elders would need some good quality time to sit down and take the application in English and translate it into Slavey and then have it again translated back to English. I hope that these liaison people who are in the communities would have that type of support from the local district offices in the regions, and then also from headquarters, that these programs need to be filled out properly by the elders and they have to know how these programs run and that there’s only so much money allocated per region, per community, per senior in the communities. In the Sahtu there’s 197 seniors who are over 60 years old. Not every senior is going to have access to funding or to these type of programs. That has to be very clearly spelled out to our people. I want just to make that comment to the Minister, Madam Chair.

My last question would have to be on the new mandate in terms of the Minister going out and seeking community input. It’s the community that’s going to really drive the success of this housing association. You get the community to back you, not just the stakeholders or the staff. To have community members really talk about what they see as a priority in the region and let them know that the funding from the federal government is on the decline now. They’re going downhill now with the federal housing initiative and that the Minister would look at an initiative that would involve the community members to really be consulted. Also, as the MLAs could have some input into the housing program. They have a lot of good ideas. We heard that maybe some woodstoves should go into the houses in the communities. They would like that; that kind of initiative to bring wood stoves into the homes. Get them out and active and working. Right now they’re sitting and putting the furnace on. I think that’s a good initiative we could explore more. You've got to be creative. I’m going to ask the Minister if he would consider something like that, having woodstoves and getting people out there and cutting wood and doing the good things in life. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In regard to the commitment we’ve made, I know in the Sahtu, when we were in Colville Lake we did commit to go into the region and have a workshop with the region with regards to housing and also I had heard similar requests from the Nahendeh riding, I believe, that we were still looking forward to doing this fiscal year. I think that by having seniors involved in these workshops, that will improve our dialogue and allow them input at these regional meetings. We definitely will be going to the different communities and hearing from the public on exactly our mandate. Also, we’re going to be reviewing our program changes. They’re not going to take effect until 2007-2008, when we’re hoping to get into the communities and get their input on the different program changes that we’re looking at. So we have committed to that and we are willing to work with the Member and also the ridings.

The other issue that he raised about woodstoves; there is an individual that when they do a home, they do have a choice to have a backup system such as a woodstove. That is offered to seniors. I think we are realizing that seniors do have a problem in most communities with the heat they do get from the furnace and they do want an alternative heating source, such as woodstoves. I think there is a program for that. I think that we are working with the seniors in that area, but we do have programs for the different type of heating systems they have in their homes. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Just for the information of Members, on the list now I have Mr. Ramsay, Menicoche, McLeod, Villeneuve. I would like to speak under general comments after that, and then we’re starting on round two. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to start off by thanking the Social Programs committee. I know there’s been a number of issues that have been raised with the Housing Corporation in the past little while, and I commend them on the report that they presented to us earlier. They have covered off a number of important issues, but I just wanted to, if I could, share with you a few of my concerns as I see it.

One of the more complex things, I think it comes from a policy direction of the government. I think it’s been a policy of the government to build stand-alone units across the Northwest Territories for the past 25 years. I’m just wondering, maybe it’s time that the government re-examined that policy, because in light of the rising energy costs that are even more pronounced here in the Northwest Territories because of our cold climate, I’m wondering if it’s time to re-examine that policy. What I really think should be happening is we should be looking at building row housing, building six-plexes or eight-plexes, whatever you want to call them, and doing things that way, instead of rushing out and just replacing unit for unit for unit in all of these various communities. Why don’t we try to collect what scarce resources there are for housing and try to get more housing on the ground? More roofs over more people heads? I think that might be one way to tackle it.

The other thing, I know the Minister knows I’m supportive of Novel and the potential that project has for the Northwest Territories, but again, those are stand-alone units and I think what I’ve seen in the past with the market housing initiative, specifically, if you want to get people into homeownership programs, you have to go out there and beat the bushes and try to identify who your clients are going to be. That wasn’t done with the market housing initiative. I think if you’re going to enter into anything like the Novel project, you have to go out and do your homework and go into every community and identify everybody that could potentially be a homeownership candidate. You have to make sure that you do that, otherwise I think we may be setting ourselves up for a big fall. Again, I am supportive of it. I think it may be a good project in the end.

The other thing I wanted to mention, and I was interested to see a response I got to a written question just recently where it was raised before about the Housing Corporation building seniors’ facilities in the various communities, and I was really interested to see at the end of the response that I got that there was no historic information on occupancy levels in the Tuk seniors’ facility. I find that really hard to believe, considering it’s only five years old. How could you not come up with historic occupancy levels? Maybe because there’s zero, or next to zero, or negligible. I think that’s, you know, when we were in Tuktoyaktuk and we went to that facility, and I mentioned it before. You walk in, the heat is cranked up, there’s nobody living there, and you open the fridge and it’s turned on full. This is just allowed to go on and allowed to happen. That’s just one example. There’s numerous examples out there.

The other thing I wanted to mention, and I know the land administration has now become paramount in a lot of the communities and trying to get communities set up and geared up to allow more housing to be put in on the ground. I just think it’s admirable that the Housing Corporation wants to try to take on this role, but we already have MACA and I think it’s MACA’s responsibility to be looking at land development in communities and assisting communities with land development, not the Housing Corporation. I think you could work in concert with MACA, but I definitely don’t agree that you need to have a full augment of staff online and get into land development in communities. I think there’s already a government department that’s mandated to do that kind of work and I’d encourage you to work with them. These are more or less comments, Madam Chair.

The other thing I wanted to mention, while I’ve got the floor, these rent supplement units that are negotiated, in some cases for up to 20 years, Madam Chair; 20 years negotiated over market rate. These contracts are virtually imposed upon local housing authorities. I just don’t know how that is allowed to happen. How is it allowed to happen? I have no idea. I think the sooner we can get out of these types of arrangements, the better off we’ll be. So I guess I’ll leave it at that, Madam Chair, and again, the Minister can respond to some of these. The one thing I will want him to respond on is to the re-examination of the policy that this government builds a house and when one is replaced, it’s unit for unit, and we just go about trying to find money to build single units. I think we have to really re-examine that policy, and the sooner the better. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to thank Mr. Ramsay for his questions. I definitely support the Member in regard to his request that we do look at more multi-constructed facilities, because it does cost us less to operate and you are able to house more people. We have made a decision that the 75 units that we’re looking at replacing in public housing are going to be multi-constructed facilities. They won’t be single dwellings. We are shifting away from that. So the 75 units that are identified to replace public housing will be multi-plex construction. You mentioned six or eight units and I think that is the way to go, and I think that because of the availability of land in communities and also because we have a large young population in a lot of our communities. We have forgotten a certain segment of our population where we’ve left out in regards to the construction of houses in the past where we look more at family dwellings and large housing units by stick-built units. I think we have to realize we’re going that way.

The other issue that you raised in regards to Novel, we are looking at some options and one of the options is to look at stacking, instead of having them all on the ground in single-constructed formation. We are looking at the possibility of stacking them to have these multi-use units where you have instead of just one family using the site, you’ll have two; in some cases, maybe four. We are looking at those as some of our options.

In regard to the issue of the seniors’ facility, I know I did respond to you about the facility in Tuk. We have an update. There are five people occupying it now. We do have two more people on the waiting list to go in there, but they are waiting for the weather to warm up before they make the decision to move. There is an improvement to get more people in there. Again, it’s an area that we do have to look at. Right now we have about 416 elders in seniors’ facilities in the Northwest Territories. There is a large number of them that we do accommodate, but again, it’s just trying to ensure that people making that shift from being in the unit they’ve been in for years and doing the transfer over to a seniors’ facility. A lot of people are hesitant to move away from their family members and be on their own. They’d as soon stay together as a family. We do have these challenges. We are working with them.

In regards to the question the Member asked with respect to MACA and the lands, presently MACA does not do land development in communities. That responsibility is left to the developer. Because of that, we have to, as a developer not only of housing, develop property along with our responsibility. In most cases, your responsibility for putting the roads in, your responsibility for putting the culverts in, your responsibility for putting the power poles and lines in, all that is left to the responsibility of the individual person or contractor to do that. So MACA has devolved the responsibility to the communities, but they have not devolved the capital assets. In the past they used to do that; now they do not. So that’s where we’re having the differences. We are working with MACA to try to find a way that, like I mentioned, we only have one lands officer in our shop to try to figure out what lands are available, what titles we own, exactly what properties we have to put money aside to develop, when do we get the pilings in, when do we get the power poles in. All that is left to one individual in the Housing Corporation and I don’t think that’s fair. But we are working with MACA on that problem.

In regard to rent sup, yes, there have been long leases in place for rent sups, but again, we have gotten away from long-term commitments. We only commit five to 10 years at the most. But I understand where the Member is coming from. That was the practice in the past where they were trying to attract the private sector to get into providing housing in which those were the commitments made back then. Again, because of legal obligations, we can’t get out of those. Once the term of those leases expire, then we will be re-looking at that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Next on the list I have Mr. Menicoche.