Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister McLeod.
Madam Chair, first of all, we appreciate the Member’s comments. I think the good work that is being done at the Housing Corporation is reflected in the budgets that we bring forward and how our funding is spread evenly across the Northwest Territories. Yellowknife, being one of the largest centres, in the last couple of years we have a few major projects here in Yellowknife. In the last seven years, I believe it is, we spent approximately $28 million in the capital. We spent $167 million in the smaller communities and about $66 million in some of the large communities, Inuvik, Hay River, Fort Smith, Fort Simpson, Norman Wells. We make a real effort to allocate our funds fairly and equally.
Part of the problem in the smaller communities is Housing might be their only option to getting a place to stay, whereas some of the larger communities, you are able to get some other types of accommodation. That’s why we introduced the Rent Supplement Program. I think it goes a long way in helping some of the residents in some of the larger communities get a place to stay at a fairly reasonable cost. We try and distribute our funding equally across the Northwest Territories, again, recognizing that Yellowknife is one of the larger centres and there are many more options here.
As we go forward, you talk about the 168 people on the waiting list. If you looked across the Northwest Territories, the waiting list in a lot of our communities are not as large but if you go percentage-wise, based on population, it’s almost equal, if not more. Their options in the small communities are limited. In the next couple of years we are targeting a lot of the smaller communities, but we’re not ever going to overlook some of the large communities and the needs they have there. As we come forward with future budgets, I think you will see that we’ve made an effort to respond to all the needs across the Northwest Territories, be it large or small communities. Thank you.
Thank you. Oh, Mr. McLeod.
I’m sorry. I apologize. I was so concentrating on the first point the Member made, I forgot about the second.
We are monitoring the one unit that we have up in Inuvik. We are able to monitor the use there as far as utilities go. I am committing to providing data to all the Members on some of the savings that we are seeing because of using a few more energy-efficient systems plus the work that we have done on the units themselves.
Right now it is fairly early in the game. We do have a new system where we are able to monitor the utility costs for pretty well every unit in the NWT Housing Corporation portfolio. Once we start doing that, we will be able to identify which of our communities and which of our units have a lot higher energy costs. We have a unit in one of the small communities where we are seeing that their utility bills are quite high. We would use that information to possibly do an energy retrofit on that unit with the hopes of bringing the costs down. So we will be able to monitor all our units closely and, again, I will be more than willing to provide information to the Members as to some of the savings we’re seeing because of all the work that we’re doing. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I appreciate the Minister’s response to that. I encourage the Housing Corp to look at all the different pilots that are out there. The one in Inuvik that a number of Members here had the opportunity to go visit was quite impressive and one in which will probably set the gold bar standard what we’re going for and trying to achieve. That said, we need to create an environment where we’re doing more than just a pilot. We need to be looking at all our rollouts, looking at all energy efficiencies out there. So I encourage the Housing Corp to come up with more ingenuity. I know there are great ideas out there and I’m really trying to foster an environment that the Members on this side of the House are more than willing to hear those innovations. We want to see those innovations. Don’t be scared to bring those innovations forward. You will probably get a lot of support if you do so. Let’s not rest on our laurels, Madam Chair. Let’s take a look at every opportunity, every unique building type. I’ve heard so many great ideas on this side of the House in terms of model, design and opportunity for employment for construction.
So keep up the good work and thank you, Madam Chair, for allowing me to do general comments.
I will assure the Member that we won’t rest on our laurels. We’ll continue to explore all new types of technology out there and see how we can incorporate that into the design of our units. Then we will realize quite a savings because the costs of utilities aren’t going down. I think we see that every year. I think last year we had to come to the Assembly for an additional $1.2 million to help our LHOs with utility costs. We have, through our Modernization and Improvement Program, been able to identify some of the units and do some major energy retrofits on those, and I think in the long run we’ll realize more savings. Once that data becomes available, we’d be more than willing to share it with the Members so we can see the results of some of the initiatives that we’ve undertaken. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Next I have Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple of points I want to relay to the Minister. I do appreciate the need and the foresight to look at the seniors needs in Fort Good Hope. The Minister has responded by putting a seniors unit there for the people. I understand from the elders in Fort Good Hope that they appreciate they’re going to get a seniors duplex. They’re looking forward to working with the Housing Corporation.
I do want to say, in the seniors duplex, if there is a possibility of looking at an alternative to the heating facility, I know you have a solar panel in the numbers here, Madam Chair. I am looking at alternatives like biomass or wood pellets.
I was in Norman Wells over the last month and there was an agent in Norman Wells that has the bins, the wood pellets, wood pellet boilers and smaller units for facilities such as this one for residential home units. That’s something I want to ask the Minister about. Not being aware why the Housing Corp is going with the solar system, it may have its valid points, but I just wanted to ask about wood pellet units. That might be useful and more of an advantage for the people and support the local economy in the Sahtu. I wanted to raise that, Madam Chair.
I am also very pleased that the people in Colville Lake, I believe when the Minister was there, spoke about a unit for the seniors or having a seniors place there. I know there’s a discussion going on with the department right now. It was a good surprise when the Minister said they were looking at Colville Lake. That means the Minister is responding to some of the requests from Colville Lake. They are looking at this duplex to help them out. Usually you don’t have any type of rental units in Colville Lake. I want to tell the Minister that the people in Colville Lake are quite happy.
The last point I want to raise, while I have the time, is the issue of affordable housing. It’s critical to us in our smaller communities. I see the Minister has committed to $875,000 in the budget. That might be construction up to five units. In small communities, we need this type of support for critical staff in our small communities. That’s been a big issue of having qualified staff, either nurses, social workers, educators or one of the land corporations or one of the municipal council governments. They need to have these essential people in our communities. I’m not sure how we are going to do the selection of which communities are going to be chosen. I don’t know what the ratings are going to be, drawing straws or criteria as to which region is going to be looked at as having the most pressing needs. I am going to throw in my pitch for the Sahtu for one of the communities. That would be appreciated. I am reminded of a staff person in Norman Wells that has taken on the job within our government but finds it very difficult to have a house in Norman Wells. I can also say that for all the other communities. I thank the Minister for responding to that new initiative for critical staff members in our communities.
Last, Madam Chair, I also want to make a pitch for the Homelessness Assistance Fund. The Minister has committed some money for this in our communities, the hard to house clientele. This initiative shows there’s going to be some movement in our small, remote, rural communities. This money will go to renovating some houses to support this initiative in our communities. I want to ask, again, that one of the communities that I visited and I was quite shocked to see that a lot of people were living in tents, in makeshift warehouses and some of them in pretty bad shape. For whatever reason, some families were in there with young children without any type of electricity, fuel or sewer. These kids were being sent to school. I don’t want to go into how they got themselves into that situation. It was dire straits for them. So there are some people who are homeless in the small communities. A lot of them are still going house to house. Some of them are being put out into situations where they have to go into a neighbour’s warehouse or in a tent. Those ones are very difficult to work with because they seem to have other issues that they need to deal with and they aren’t dealing with them. So what do we do? They’re homeless and not going anywhere. The alternative is you see them coming to places like Yellowknife, you see them in the city of Yellowknife and they’re not doing too well in Yellowknife either. It’s really a difficult situation for MLAs to say how we help them. How do we really help them? How do we help the communities? We see a lot of them also in Yellowknife and when they go back home, they’re okay. So I guess it must be a never ending issue or problem for us as MLAs from the small communities, and the MLAs from larger centres that have attracted the people from the small communities to live here. So I’m hoping that one of the initiatives for the homelessness initiative would be looked at in the Sahtu and possibly one of the communities. Again, I’m not sure of the criteria; however, I’m going to make a pitch for the Sahtu to be considered as one of them to look at.
So, overall, I want to thank the Minister. I understand that the money from Ottawa is slowly being turned off and then we’re opening up other internal funding to meet the needs of the people in the North, and the Minister is dealing with it the best he can with the resources they have, and at the same time follow through on our vision for the North and the funding that we get. So I’m fairly pleased with what I see in front of me and I have no major issues with Housing at this point. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member raised a lot of interesting points. Again, we appreciate the support of the Member. The $835,000 he spoke of was an internal allocation to try and address some of the housing issues for professionals in the community. However, we’re looking forward to bringing forward initiatives to this Assembly, with the support of this Assembly, and we’re looking forward to bringing some initiatives forward that would help try and address some of the issues in a lot of the small communities that have challenges with housing for staff. So we’re looking at updating committee soon on this initiative.
The other initiative, while we do have four pilot projects this year, we haven’t determined which communities they’re going into yet to have some of these hard-to-house units in the community. We’ll take an existing unit, do a little bit of work to it, and it will be a place where folks that are homeless can go and lay their heads down. So it will hopefully address some of the issues that they’re facing in some of the smaller communities and see how this works. We’ll go forward from there. We haven’t determined the location of these yet.
We had originally thought in the seniors that were going into Good Hope of going biomass, but one of the challenges we’re facing right now is the fact that the supply is not where it should be right now for some of the other communities. Once supply improves, I think we should see more and more of the biomass. So right now we’re sticking to the solar panels for that particular unit in Good Hope.
As I’ve said a couple of times before, we’re always exploring ways that we can improve our use of fossil fuels in some of our communities, and as pellets become more easily available to a lot of the outlying communities, I think you’ll start seeing the Housing Corporation taking initiative and start going that direction.
So, again, I appreciate the Member’s comments and support, and we look forward to working with committee as we work on the next few initiatives that we have on the go. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. General comments. Next on my list I have Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have a few comments and questions and I’d like to reiterate Mr. Dolynny’s comments about the work that the department has been doing. I should say the corporation. The corporation has been doing a very good job of staying ahead of many of the problems that have existed for quite some time and they’re working very hard at trying to solve them. So it’s nice to see. Of course, I do have some concerns.
Mr. Dolynny mentioned the 168-people-long waiting list. My concern, and I’ve expressed it to the Minister many times before, is with transition housing, particularly in the city of Yellowknife, but elsewhere in the Territories as well. I don’t see anything in the information that we’re presented within the budget here that is going to address transition housing, and I appreciate that we have funding that has come from the Housing Corp for Betty House and that is going to be under construction soon. But it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what we need. We also need transition housing elsewhere across the Territories and it’s not something which I see addressed. So I have to highlight that as a concern for me.
There’s no information here, so I would like to ask the question to the Minister of the number of vacant units that we have right now. I know the department has been working at bringing that number down and it’s been a couple of years, but I would like to know where we’re at. I won’t even guess at what number we were at a while ago, but I’d like to know how many vacant units we have. Of those units, I’d like to know which ones are scheduled for demolition, because there are vacant units that we can put people in, but there are vacant units which are unable to be used. How many do we have to still get rid of completely and get them off the books? How many are vacant and what are we doing to fill them with actual people?
Lastly, a concern specific to my community, specific to Yellowknife, and it probably applies to many other communities, as well, but there is a dire need in Yellowknife for more public housing units, particularly for single individuals, people who are living on their own. The Minister knows how expensive it is to rent here. It’s pretty much impossible for a person who is in a lower wage job as a single person to be able to afford housing, and many, many people in that category simply don’t get access to public housing because they’re last on the list. Families certainly come first and a single individual is basically not a priority with the housing authorities. I have a problem with that and I understand why that is, but I think we have to do something to address that problem.
In terms of other units, I know that the corporation is replacing old units here in Yellowknife and getting new ones, but I understood a while ago we had this cap on the number of housing units we can have. That’s a concern for me. We need to be able to add to our public housing stock. I appreciate it’s an expense, but we can’t simply be getting rid of old units and adding new ones to replace them and keeping the same number of units available at the same number forever.
So I’d appreciate some comments on some of those and that’s all I have, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Madam Chair. As far as the vacant units go, we’ve got 75 public housing units that are vacant and I think we’ve got a number of them that are under repair in addition to the 75. So those are ready to be allocated.
On the affordable housing side, we’ve got 58 units that are ready to be occupied and we have a number that are under repair in addition to the 58. So as you can recall, from a number of years ago, we were up to, like, 135 vacant units. So the number has gone down quite a bit.
I share the Member’s concern. We’re challenged with adding on to our public housing stock because of declining CMHC funding. So that’s why, if you look at our notes we always say replacement of public housing, because as we put a new unit into the system, we’re going to have to take another one out. We have 89 units right now that are ready for disposal. These are surplus units or ones that, with the new standards nowadays, we’ve got to do the hazardous assessment on them and then that adds quite a cost on to them. So we’ve got 89 that are scheduled to be disposed of.
The public housing in Yellowknife, again, we just completed I think it was a 19-unit apartment building here in the capital. We recognize that there’s a need here, too, and the Rent Supplement Program I think was taken advantage of. I think the Territorial Rent Supplement Program, I think the bulk of our clients were from the capital, which, as the Member has said and I totally agree with her, is that the rent here is quite high. So that’s been taken up by some of the larger communities where there is a bit of a challenge. Again, it’s a fine balancing we have to do. I mean, we want to be able to meet the needs of all across the Northwest Territories. The Member mentioned the money we put into the Betty House and I think it was $2.3 million. A little more fortunate here in the capital that they do have a few places they’re able to go. Again, the challenge is in the smaller communities. I think the Member mentioned that too.
It’s a start, but the hard to house pilot program I just spoke about is a start. We have a new homelessness coordinator hired who started in August, very enthusiastic, and part of her duties are to try and gather all the information from across the Northwest Territories on what some of our challenges are, so we’re looking forward to seeing the results of her good work in the near future.
Again, it’s a fine balancing act. We have to make sure we meet the needs of the capital, the larger communities and the smaller communities, and we think over the next couple of years with some of the investments that we’re making, I think we’ll be able to address some of those needs. I mean, it’s an ongoing process and will there ever come a day where we’re able to meet all. I wish we’re around to see it, Ms. Bisaro, but it’s a start, and I think there’s been a huge improvement.
Again, I appreciate the comments of the Member on the work that folks at the NWT Housing Corporation are doing. A lot of that work, I think, would go by the wayside if it wasn’t for the political support that we receive from committee and from this Assembly, so we appreciate that. I think that goes a long way to us advancing some of the initiatives that we have on the go.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Next for general comments I have Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, would like to express and acknowledge the efforts of the Housing Corporation and the staff in terms of a lot of the fundamental challenges that we face up here in the Northwest Territories, particularly more so in the riding that I represent. It has always been a challenge just trying to meet the people in the homeless shelters interests and concerns. I think the Housing Corporation has come a long way and I look forward to at least the continued relationship with the management and the staff, so kudos to the corporation.
At the same time, there are two parts to at least my general comments. I’m interested in terms of the status in terms of the efforts towards trying to be energy efficient, in terms of the projects related to converting the fuel-fired water tanks and where that’s at. I’m curious as to whether we’ve made any progress on that front.
The other things I wanted to concentrate on, or at least highlight, is there are always challenges for the local small communities. There are a few jobs. I know, fortunately, there are a few people that work for government, and those are not devolution jobs, by the way, in the small communities. A lot of them are seasonal jobs, as well, and part-time jobs. Of course, the cost of living is pretty high in small communities and there are some young families that aspire to try to gain independence and create a healthy climate for their children, so they aspire to own their own homes and get out of public housing. I know there was mention made of efforts to try and create programs that could meet this certain sector of the population that are young, aspiring to own their own homes, and whether there are programs out there that could meet their interests.
In that regard, there are also some fundamental challenges that remain, particularly on the K’atlodeeche Reserve. There are jurisdictional matters. But at the same time, I understand that there are some efforts to try and do some retrofits on the reserve. Just recently we had an effort by this government of opening up a wellness centre and I understand it’s been in the making for a long time. It’s been achieved, and it serves as the model, in terms of an iconic achievement of having multi-level governments cooperate and collaborate and ensuring the interests of the public are met in terms of their needs. So I’m hoping to hear perhaps some positive updates as to what kind of efforts have been made to try and at least sort out those jurisdictional matters on that front.
Also, at the same time, I know there are smaller communities that I represent that aspire to trying to at least manage the housing initiatives in their community, and whether they could aspire to perhaps have their local associations established in those communities. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member’s first point there on the hot water tanks, I think we’ve got about 1,234 units in the thermal communities and about 90 of them are still on electric hot water, so we’re looking at opportunities to convert the rest of those. That’s 7.3 percent of the ones in the thermal communities. In the hydro communities we have 22 percent of our units that are still on electric. For the number of units we have, I think the fact that we have quite a number of them on oil fired and, again, always looking forward for opportunities to improve that.
The Member spoke on the K’atlodeeche Reserve. I mean, we’ve been working with them for a number of years now since I’ve taken over the portfolio. We had a number of vacant units there. I think we still have a number of vacant units there, but there’s an issue, again, of jurisdiction. I think the band had recently passed a band council resolution so that they’re able to give title to some of the land to their beneficiaries, I think, through a lease arrangement or something. They had to go through Canada for that, and I think they’ve got a band council resolution, is my understanding. Once they have that, there is opportunity for us to identify some homeownership clients, because as the Member knows, land tenure is one that’s part of the agreement, and if they’re able to get land tenure then we’re able to see those units be allocated if there are eligible clients. If not, again, we’ll have to look at the fact that we may have to turn some of these over to public housing like we’ve done with a lot of other units across the Northwest Territories.
As far as local housing authorities go, some of the Member’s communities, I think, don’t have public housing units in the communities. I mean, we’re always willing to sit down with the community. I think the one community in particular, they’ve got three vacant units there. I’ve been to the community and I’ve heard their concerns with those three units. We are looking at turning those into a public housing unit so we can allocate them, because it’s not doing us any good and not doing the community any good to see all those vacant units. Again, I point out the fact we had 135 vacant units a couple years ago, some that were vacant for a number of years. We’ve managed to get that number down, and we’re still working on getting the number down even further.
There is opportunity there to enter into some kind of an agreement with the local government where they might be able to administer, or if they have the capacity they could even do the maintenance on these units because it saves us from having to send somebody into the community to provide maintenance. We’ve got a couple of agreements like that already in place with a couple more remote communities, which works well for them and works well for us.
We’re looking at ways we can work with the community to try and get those three units allocated and off the books.
As far as homeownership goes, ideally we’d like to see as many people in our homeownership programs as possible. We’ve tried every which way to get people into homeownership. We’ve expanded the criteria. We’ve expanded the income threshold so people that are making a little bit more can get into homeownership. What we’re very careful in doing now, and I think we’ve been guilty of this in the past, in our eagerness to try to get everybody into homeownership, we put some into homeownership that actually didn’t belong there and we set them up for failure. Many of them have quit claim to their units and they’ve gone back into public housing. That’s why with the HELP Program, it was supposed to be a bit of a transition from public housing into homeownership. You were given two years to see if you qualified or if you could make it as a homeowner.
Ideally, we’d like to see as many people as we can in homeownership but we have to do our due diligence to make sure that we’re not setting a lot of our people up for failure. We have been guilty of doing that in the past. We want to learn from those mistakes and make sure that we don’t do them again in the future. We’re starting to see that, as this next generation comes along, there is a lot more work. We would like to see them get into homeownership. We will work with them any way we can. We have expanded the criteria on our programs quite a bit in the last couple of years to try to accommodate as many people as was possible. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Anything further, Mr. Nadli? Next I have Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I am pleased to see a lot of these expenditures in all the communities and most particularly the seniors centre in Fort Liard, much needed and much overdue. I am most particularly interested in the Homelessness Initiative and some of their plans, and certainly Fort Liard has one of the worst core needs in my riding. There is lots of overcrowding. I don’t know what criteria would be used to identify the communities that fit the program guidelines of the Homelessness Initiative. I’d just like to ask the Minister what kind of criteria they will be using for this particular program.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Madam Chair. We’ll be sending a letter out here to all the communities soon. What we would like to do is we would like to work with the community organizations, because we need to have somebody in the communities to oversee the operation of the pilot projects in the community. We will be sending a letter out soon, explaining some of the criteria. As long as we’re able to find a partner in the community, I think that improves their chances.
I know with only four, the need is high across the Northwest Territories with only four. We’ll have to spread those out quite evenly all across the Northwest Territories, possibly one in each region. We’ll see how those work and if we have success with that, then we will look at probably adding more on in the future. Again, I can’t make that guarantee right now. We have to see how these four projects work. We wanted to find a partner in the communities. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you very much. When I first heard about this Homelessness Initiative program, I was quite excited. I certainly would like to see it as ongoing in future years for sure. I would like to know some of the definitions like small communities, because an initiative or program like this will certainly suit the needs of Fort Simpson. Many, many residents have approached me and said, lots of people come in from the small communities, they’re stuck there for weather. Often sometimes they actually stay in Fort Simpson, and the same thing that Mr. Yakeleya talked about, culture, faith, staying at cousins, et cetera. I’m not too sure the intent of this, but I certainly can see an application in the community of Fort Simpson and utilizing this for the benefits of the homeless people that live in Fort Simpson. As well, there is a large population of young people that are living with cousins and they are conserving as well.
I would like to ask about their guidelines. Is it specific to small communities? Often, small community programs, they often call Fort Simpson a regional centre, so that’s concerning. That means Fort Simpson, even though it is a small community, doesn’t benefit from some of the small community programs. I would just like to ask the Minister that.
We’ll look at all the communities that don’t have an option there right now. If there is a need in Fort Simpson, obviously, in our opinion, they would be an eligible community. Again, the major piece of this is finding a good community partner to work with. But to answer the Member’s question, Fort Simpson would be eligible. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Any further general comments?
Detail.
Detail, okay. Then I will turn Members’ attention to page 3-12, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, finance and infrastructure services, infrastructure investment summary. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you. I just have a quick question on the general budget here. Each year our CMHC contribution has declined. It is a financial sustainability problem. We have been implementing a new strategic plan through the Housing Corporation with a lot of support from this side of the House for initiatives that have been put forward by the Minister and his staff. I’m just wondering if I can get a quick update on where we are at and how the strategic plan implementation is improving our status in terms of long-term financial sustainability. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. McLeod.
I will pass that on to Mr. Stewart.
Thank you. Mr. Stewart.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I think, overall, the issue around the declining funding is there really are a lot of elements that are going in to trying to manage that. Obviously, our top priority is to work with our federal partner and see if they may reconsider that decision to get out of the social housing business. We work very closely with our provincial and territorial colleagues on that. The Minister is the chair of the P/T forum, the Housing forum, and the Ministers met in June and were developing a number of materials to help engage with the federal government, to both demonstrate the need but also to talk about that partnership and a way forward on that. We’re looking forward now to a meeting with the federal Minister on that.
That said, we can’t sit around, as the Member knows, and wait and hope that the federal government changes its view. So we’ve implemented a number of things in terms of looking at our own management of the units, and the cost and energy costs are a big portion of that. We’ve looked at other revenue opportunities. We’ve looked at other programming options like the Transitional Rent Supplement, take a little bit of the pressure off, the Public Housing Program and steps like that to alleviate some of that pressure, and then probably very importantly is the investment that the GNWT has made to offset that, with the support of this House, to offset some of those declines that we have seen in these past few years. A lot more work needs to be done, but I think we are taking some steps to try and manage that and make sure that the worst option which might be reducing the stock is one that we don’t have to take. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Stewart. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate that response. I wonder if the Minister would commit to giving committee a briefing on that and the contributions from the various measures we have been taking and a real look at… If our hopes are denied by the federal government, what are the realities and what progress are we making on our own at addressing those?
At the same time, I would just like to ask, the last couple of fiscal years, $14 million, almost $15 million each year, a little bit more last year than in this current fiscal year, and this year $31.4 million, a doubling. I’d like a quick explanation of this doubling of the budget for this year and how that’s come about. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I will commit to the Member and all Members that we will provide them with a briefing as to some of the steps that we’re taking.
The president said that I am the chair of the P/T Ministers of Housing. We had a quick meeting in the spring and there was a concern from all the Ministers from across the country on the declining CMHC funding. What happened is we are losing. Last year I think we lost close to $1 million. They weren’t feeling it as much down south as we were up here because it’s a big portion of ours, but they’re starting to feel it now, so you’re getting the Ministers from the larger jurisdictions saying, hey, hold on a second here, we need to talk. We’ve been saying that from day one because we feel the effects a lot quicker. We have a commitment I think through the Premiers conference in Niagara on the Lake that the new federal Minister of Housing has made a commitment to meet with the provincial/territorial Ministers, which is a huge first step, and then we can make our case to them. We had hoped to have that meeting here in the capital this fall, but unfortunately, with the elections and everybody sitting, we weren’t able to pull that together. So we’re going to try to pull that together quite soon.
Again, I will commit to providing Members with a briefing on some of the steps that were taken. If you look at all the little steps we’re taking, even the biomass and the energy efficiency, that’s all geared towards saving us some money that we can put back. Our rent collections are actually improving quite a bit. We have one community that went from 26 percent to 86 percent, which is huge. That goes a long way in helping us to reinvest some of that money.
I will have Mr. Stewart touch on the second part of Member Bromley’s question. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Mr. Stewart.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member may recall that there were a number of initiatives that the Housing Corporation committed to do last fall, including the seniors facilities that we were using internal resources for. That’s partly reflected in the 2014-2015 Main Estimates. Those are the resources that we had from our working capital that had built up over time, so we’re going to be investing that money into additional housing. You will see the increased amount in ’14-15 and for the next few years as we actually implement the investments we had discussed last fall. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Stewart. Anything further, Mr. Bromley?
It just seems that we are more than doubling our budget here and where is that money coming from?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Stewart.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Over time, the Housing Corporation has – probably over the last eight to 10 years – accumulated some working capital that we use for dealing with project overruns and those sorts of things. That value in our financial statements has been growing over time and that’s a good thing, but we also didn’t want to sit on a bunch of cash that could be put back into housing. So we are doing that reinvestment now to get that working capital level down to what I would consider more standard kinds of levels, and those are the investments you are seeing over the next few years that are allowing us to address some of these issues that have been long-outstanding issues. Thank you.
Thank you. Members, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, finance and infrastructure services, infrastructure investment summary. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a couple of things I wanted to follow up on. The Minister mentioned we passed up on investing in biomass for some housing we are developing in Fort Good Hope because of the lack of supply. Unfortunately, I heard the same thing from Education, or it might have been Public Works and Services in the same community just a year or two ago for their new school. This is a problem when we consider these things independently, ignoring other government facilities, and since the school project turned down biomass, we know we have a supply in Norman Wells, an adjacent community.
There is a cost to conversion if a supply comes over later, and it’s much cheaper if we design the facility from the beginning to use biomass. Maybe I will leave it as a comment. I would welcome any comments from the Minister, but just as a comment, we need to get together. We can’t be doing these things independently when, if we got together, our utility rates would be going down. We’ve heard this is an issue for the Housing Corporation, a significant issue. We need to get together across departments. This government needs to play a role, albeit temporarily, in supply, if need be. With the school and housing and other government facilities, we could have an economic supply there, but dealing with them independently, we lose the opportunity to bring a supply of energy to the community that’s cheaper for residents, as well, and would benefit them. Just a comment there. Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Madam Chair. We work with the Arctic Energy Alliance and they’ve done an assessment and even go into feasibility, and if there are opportunities, and once the supply increased, we have to play a role in that, then that’s something we would have to consider. We can convert these over to biomass quite easily. We thought with the solar panels it would be a bit of a start and then as supply improves, they can be converted over. So we haven’t ruled out all our options. We are still looking at the feasibility right now. We have until next summer. Construction will start in the next fiscal year, so we have a bit of time to do a bit more research, and if there’s opportunity there to incorporate this in, by all means that would be the wise decision to make. Thank you.
Thanks for that from the Minister. A couple of other things, there’s been a lot of interest expressed on small houses, especially for seniors. Where are we at on that, Madam Chair? Are some of the units being proposed here small houses for seniors, or small units? Thank you.
Not in this present budget. There’s none of the small units the Member is talking about for seniors.
Are we thinking of that? I mean, are we preparing to respond to that interest in smaller units?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Stewart.
