The Minister, obviously, isn’t addressing the questions here. There has certainly been debate for many, many years. The public has had a hard time and eventually got these hearings and made their views known. Now, as a government, we should be recognizing those. This statement doesn’t.
Again, I’ve made the point in past statements that it would, almost certainly, if it was a new mine, be governed by a legally binding environmental management agreement such as we see for the diamond mines, transboundary water agreements, and so on. The Giant Mine Project is far from new. It’s a toxic legacy of past federal government negligence and inaction. All the more reason to ensure the federal government, that both the proponent and regulator, is held to legally binding account for environmental safety. Models for an agreement have been suggested at the hearings by YKDFN, City of Yellowknife, Alternatives North. What will the Minister do to ensure a legally binding environmental management agreement is put in place?
We’ll continue to be actively involved at the table with our staff, and politically, where necessary, to move this project forward to address the issues, the governance issues, the process issues, the content issues, the decisions made in terms of choice or type of remediation, the debate over the governance piece. We are a voice and we will continue to be there for all Northerners.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, I see no evidence of the active involvement that the Minister speaks of, or to being a voice for the people of the Northwest Territories. That is the very point that the Members are raising today in this House. The co-proponent’s closing comments letter contains no commitment to the preparation of a fully-funded perpetual care plan. Even though site liability supposedly remains with the federal government after devolution, site management will continue forever or until technology is found to eliminate the arsenic. Will the GNWT include the requirement for a fully-funded perpetual care plan as an element of the final Devolution Agreement?
The Giant Mine site is not part of the devolution negotiations. It’s going to be separate and apart from that process.
In terms of the questions the Member’s raised on behalf of his constituents, let me restate the offer that I would be more than happy, and willing and interested to come to committee with the officials that have been at the table to talk at great length about the decisions made, the detail that would address some of the many concerns raised by the Member. While it may not bring us to consensus, it would at least show that we are there, we are fully participating. This is a complex issue and decisions have been made in the overall best interest of all Northerners.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister knows full well that environmental remediation is a topic of the devolution negotiations. Out of the demolition of the roaster, possibly the most lethally toxic building in all of Canada, the adjoining stack contains 14 tonnes of arsenic trioxide that’s permeated with arsenic asbestos and other hazards. No news release, no media briefing, no explanatory advertising, no community information meetings, no attempts to inform the public and allay concerns for human health and environmental safety in this announcement. They just don’t learn.
When will this government demand that the federal government meet its responsibilities for public information and accountability on this project?
Let me say again, the Giant Mine site is not part of the devolution negotiations. There is a section on waste sites, but the Giant Mine site, given the size, cost, and magnitude of the project, is not part of the devolution negotiations.
Once again, let me offer the briefing. I believe we are complying with our obligations. Maybe not to the extent that some folks would have us, but we make every effort to communicate and make sure information is there, recognizing, of course, that we are there as the government. But the federal government, whose project this is and whose overall responsibility it is, is also there and has the majority of the liability. We make our case and in some cases, as I’ve learned over the years in projects and issues, we change the things we can, try to recognize the things that we can’t, and we keep asking to make sure we have the wisdom to know the difference. I want to thank St. Francis of Assisi and give full credit for that quote.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to return to oral questions.
---Unanimous consent granted
The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of the NWT Housing Corporation. I was asking the Minister questions last week regarding the large number of home ownership units remaining vacant because people don’t fit program criteria. At my constituency meeting in Detah, I was told one applicant was turned down because their income exceeded the $77,000 income ceiling for program eligibility. That seems to lack realism. Suppose a household made $80,000, would they be any more able to buy a home in the private market in Detah? Some flexibility obviously is needed here.
The Minister said a program review was underway and agreed the housing needs are urgent. Can he tell me what action is being taken now to free up these vacant units through more flexible program interpretation?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my discussions with the Member I did say that I was going to look at these vacant units, because I know that we have a number of vacant units across the Northwest Territories and we tried to get as many clients as we could into them. Those clients we couldn’t get into them, we converted a lot of these over to public housing. I will commit to the Member that I need to follow up on the number of vacant units that are on there.
He raises the point of income, and that’s one that we’ve had discussions about as a corporation. We tried a GAP program a couple of years ago, where people who were slightly over the coordinated income threshold for that particular community, we would consider them for some of our programs.
Thanks to the remarks from the Minister there. When we talk about getting people into housing, we’re often talking about getting them out of homelessness. The Housing First Movement I’ve referred to in the past points out the dramatic decrease in government’s other service costs. When we meet the lower costs of providing housing, you avoid emergency issues and so on. We need to look at the big picture.
Can the Minister say how the Housing Corporation includes in its analysis of policy, for example, such as we’re discussing the financial benefits of reduced costs of other services when people are housed, or why this isn’t taken into account if they don’t in a total cost-benefit analysis.
We understand the advantages of getting people off the streets and into public housing. That’s why there’s public housing. We have 24 public housing units across the Northwest Territories, and from public housing we like to think that a lot of them can graduate into the home ownership program.
We have approximately 1,600 families we’ve been able to put into the home ownership program over a number of years. We try to be as flexible as possible in getting as many people into some of these programs as we can. For example, with one of the home ownership programs, we allow them to carry up to $5,000 in arrears. We’ve had a very good look at the whole shelter policy review, the whole home ownership portfolio. We try to be as flexible as possible to get people into some of these units. Unfortunately, some of them are turned down for other reasons than arrears.
In most of our communities there is no private market for housing. This is a reality. We can say that if a household makes over a certain amount of money, they should go to the private market to build, but we know that’s not happening. In large part, that’s due to the basic lack of local capacity to construct housing. Again, reality.
Can the Minister say how this lack of local private capacity issue is considered in the equation of setting eligibility levels and whether this is under review?
In a lot of the communities they do have the capacity to construct units. We’ve seen that in a number of occasions in the past. We have a lot of our units constructed by local contractors that have the training and knowledge how to build a house. Although there are some challenges in some places, I don’t think that’s primarily one of them.
We do take into consideration the fact that these communities don’t have a private market. The core need income threshold might be a little higher in their community. If you look at the overall percentage of our home ownership programs, they are delivered to a lot of smaller communities because we as the corporation recognize that there is not much of a private market. They are not like some of the regional centres.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just by way of example here, I’ve just got an e-mail here today, mentioning a home ownership unit in Enterprise that sat empty for three years. It has frozen at least twice and has mould in the basement. A person visited Providence recently and the night watchman device was shining brightly, meaning again there was no heat in the unit and it was probably frozen up. Apparently, Fort Resolution has 16 home ownership units vacant. We know about my situation in Detah. Obviously, we need that flexibility in policies.
Can the Minister assure me that we will be not just reading from the rulebook any longer and we will be applying flexibility in getting these units occupied before they deteriorate?
I can assure Members of this House that we try having a little bit of flexibility in some of these cases. We do, obviously, I mean we all know that we need some rules, otherwise we’d have just anybody in those units and we may set up a lot of people for failure, which has happened in the past.
As far as the vacant units go, Members of the 16th Assembly will recall that we had 137 vacant units across the Northwest Territories. We had a number in Fort Resolution, we had a number in Gameti. We’ve had a fairly aggressive program in trying to fill them.
We’ve updated Members at the end of the 16th as to our strategy. Most of these units, to my understanding, have been filled. The ones that we couldn’t get public housing clients into, we converted to public housing. The communities that didn’t have public housing, we’ve entered into some agreements with the local band government to provide the administration and maintenance, where possible, on these. I’m going to commit that I will follow up on the number of vacant units we have across the Northwest Territories, home ownership units. I know there’s always going to be a vacancy. There’s going to be a vacancy in public housing units because we need to get these worked on. I will follow up on the number of vacant units across the Northwest Territories and provide the information to all the Members.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve often raised the issue of Stanton Territorial Hospital’s deficit, and over the years I’ve often said that it’s my belief that it’s underfunded and it needs a true and serious detailed funding assessment. Recently, I went to the public administrator’s open house to talk about this particular issue about how the hospital is running, and of course, I was very impressed with the work that they’re doing there. What stood out clearly are two particular issues. The first one is the physician costs and medical travel costs are put down on the Stanton Territorial Hospital. Certainly, the second issue out of it is it’s completely out of their control.
The point I’m getting to is that’s what’s causing the deficit at Stanton Territorial Hospital, things they have to manage and control but are out of their responsibility.
My question to the Minister of Health and Social Services simply is: Is his department doing an assessment and consideration about moving those particular costs outside of the Stanton Territorial Hospital and making them a departmental cost, which will allow the hospital to operate financially sound?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. We are currently reviewing the Medical Travel Policy, the entire program. We do feel that there are some issues with the program and we are reviewing it. We have our staff in place now that will be doing a review of the program.
As far as physician costs, Stanton Hospital is a territorial hospital, so it does provide service to all of the other communities and they’re budgeted for that reason. As far as that creating a deficit, that does create a bit of a deficit, but it’s getting a lot better in the last couple of years. The deficit has gone down considerably.
I appreciate the Minister recognizing those two particular issues, the ones I’ve raised, but I think he’s missed the concern that they’re well outside the ability to manage it at Stanton.
The Department of Health sets the mandate and value of what they will provide the authority for physician costs, as well as medical travel costs, but their burdened to run the actuals. In other words, the department provides a budget and the Stanton authority has to do the actual, which always puts them in deficit. That’s why I once again ask, would the Minister be able to take a look at the situation and ask themselves, as a department, would it not better fit under a departmental expense rather than causing a continual deficit at Stanton Hospital, which makes them look bad when it really isn’t their fault.
I agree that medical travel is more of travel where the costs at one time used to be costed out or spent or expended authority by authority, but Stanton is running the medical travel. The Stanton Territorial Hospital is running the medical travel and they’re saying that it does create part of their deficit. It’s a large chunk of their expenditures – the biggest chunk, actually, when we divide it into certain sections – but it is being reviewed. That’s the reason we have brought staff in to review it, to make sure that these costs that should be charged to other authorities are charged to other authorities and not to Stanton, and that the cost is not driven by other authorities and then Stanton is forced to pay for it. That’s part of the view.
I appreciate the Minister recognizes the problem, which is now followed by my next question, which is: In the interim, is the Minister willing to cover the actual costs of both the physician and the medical travel costs? Because at present, what’s being budgeted is nowhere near sufficient enough to cover the actuals. That’s what keeps making this authority look bad when they’re doing a fantastic job. That’s the issue. Would the Minister see what he can do?
Right-sizing the budget is probably going to be part of the review.
Mr. Speaker, I’d like to present a petition dealing with the matter of the establishment of a cellular telephone service in Fort Providence, Northwest Territories.
The petition contains 995 signatures of Northwest Territories residents. The petitioner’s request that the Government of the Northwest Territories work with the appropriate organizations to actively support the establishment of cellular telephone service in Fort Providence, Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll be tabling the Stanton Territorial Hospital general referral form for occupational therapy, for physiotherapy, which clearly shows urgent outpatient client status.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Minister, Mr. Miltenberger.
Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document, entitled Natural Resources Conservation Trust Fund Annual Report, 2011-2012. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to table a poster here today. It belongs to the NWT Disabilities Council regarding their annual auction, of course, which is being held November 24th, between 7 and 11, and you’ll see that on the poster if you click on it on-line. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have raised my hand a couple of times for the tabling of documents, so I request that we return to item 14, tabling of documents.
---Unanimous consent granted
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to table a letter to Mr. Richard Edjericon, chairperson of the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board, from Ms. Joanna Ankersmit, AANDC; and Ray Case, GNWT; on the Giant Mine remediation project closing comments. Mahsi.
