To dismiss out of hand the initiatives to become more efficient in our hiring, to empower our people to go down south on hard-to-fill positions to be able to make on-the-spot job offers, to make us more competitive in terms of how we do that, to say that the Nominee Program that will hopefully increase the number of seats available with the expedited process, cut the times down to six months would help bring, hopefully, hundreds of people into the Northwest Territories, plus their families is not worth the effort, I think doesn’t do justice to the complexity and the going back to the issue of let’s just tax the small diminishing population that we do have in the hopes that somehow we can generate the amount of revenue that we need. What we need is an expanded population, expanded tax base that’s going to create more tax revenue, more people with jobs, families here using our services, driving up the quality of living in the Northwest Territories and giving us the capacity to do things we need to do.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I agree this is complex and there’s a complexity to this that can’t be addressed in this format, but this Minister is not coming forward with discussions on revenue generation. We’re not having any of that. There’s no analysis being done. To do analysis requires an unbelievable effort on part of committee. Currently there is no tax levy on natural gas and propane in the NWT. The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, had it gone ahead, would have been powered on natural gas without a penny of tax collected by this government, and this situation, this travesty remains true today. Not surprisingly, no other jurisdiction subsidizes such fossil fuel consumption and foregoes revenues in this completely inexplicable way.
Would the Minister at least consider closing the policy gap and protecting our people by establishing a revenue opportunity to help with costs incurred from that activity, even though he’s refused to do so to date? Mahsi.
Once again what I will commit to do is I’ll commit to put a paper together that I’ll share with committee that will lay out some of the challenges when it comes to raising some of the taxes, which we have looked at in terms of petroleum products and motive and non-motive fuels. It’s not like we dismiss it out of hand, but we have to look at the balance and the cost impact on the economy. I will share that with committee and we can have a discussion if committee wishes to ask us to appear before committee. If there is a consensus, we will look at including that in the transition document, but in this budget there’s no intention to raise taxes. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the 2013 Alberta Achievement Tests, they talk about factors that give our smaller communities and larger centres test results. One of the biggest factors that brought our percentage down was the children’s attendance in schools.
I want to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, in order to raise the level of success for our young people, what is the department doing along with education boards in communities to ensure that children go to school, stay in school and bring their grades up? Right now, the biggest factor is children not attending school.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. This particular area is a prime focus of my department to improve the overall education system in the Northwest Territories. The students learning and success will improve if attendance rates also improve. The Member is alluding to that. Ensuring students attend regularly is a shared responsibility between the school boards, ourselves as the Department of Education, families and the community at large.
We are doing what we can. Within Educational Renewable and Innovation, we want to focus on students’ well-being through safety and care as school practice and nutritious food in our schools and also enhancing the school/community relations through elders in schools, residential school resources, staff training and also providing personalized quality of education through focused inclusive learning supports, career orientation and distance learning programming. Those are just some of the key areas we’ve initiated within our department and we will continue to make those improvements in our educational programming. Mahsi.
I do wish the department all the success in their initiatives to raise the level of attendance of our children for them to go to school.
Is the Minister looking at some innovative ways that the school itself can do to get the children and parents saying it’s important that your child gets the proper amount of rest so they can come to school fresh and be ready to hit the school work? Is his department working with the educational boards to do a one-time initiative, as they did a long time ago, and get the teachers to go and visit the families at their homes, sit down with the parents, talk with them at their homes rather than have the parents come to the school and meet with the teachers? Can we do a reversal on that?
We are discussing both of either the parents going into the school system or the teachers going into households to talk about attendance as well. Parents and guardians are encouraged to ensure their children attend school on a regular basis, Mr. Speaker. When an individual misses one day a week of school over the life of high school, it equals one year without school. That has a tremendous impact. So there should be attendance of 90 percent or more. That’s our target that we want to achieve. We are working very closely with the school boards to achieve that. We are developing various action plans geared towards how we can improve attendance in our school systems. Mahsi.
In today’s life, students bring with them lots of issues to school. Some of these issues they have they need support on. Is the school now looking at ways to help the children with their emotional and mental issues, so they can have support other than to hold on to them and not deal with them? That sometimes prevents a child from attending school. Is there support for them such as counselling services in our small schools for the kids?
The quickest answer would be yes. Again, we are working with school boards to establish those kinds of support mechanisms. Again, poor attendance is a symptom of underlying issues, such as students being disengaged in learning, negative feelings within our schools towards students or families, a sense of not belonging, and the safety factor is a huge issue. It’s a priority for school boards. Our prime focus is on student well-being through safe and caring school practices, providing nutritious food in our school system. Those are fundamental and what we’ve heard from our elders and educators in the school system that we must provide to our education system in the Northwest Territories. Those are areas that we will push forward on. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Colleagues, before we go on today, we’ve been going through eight questions and eight answers today and it takes 15 minutes. Your preamble and your responses, if you could tighten it up a little bit for the House, thank you. The honourable Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In follow-up to my Member’s statement about the budget, I will have questions for the hardworking veteran Minister of Finance.
I would like to see if the Minister can give me some information on how they look at getting more information from these budget dialogues going forward. The numbers are definitely low. Can we get some information on how we improve that?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When you go out on budget dialogues, it’s a commitment that takes a number of weeks. There’s a Swedish word that caught my eye that sort of lays out some of the challenges of that task. The Swedish word is resfeber. It’s the restless beat of a traveller’s heart before the journey begins, a mixture of anxiety and anticipation. Every time I go out and go around the territory, I always wonder how it’s going to go. I look forward to going out to the communities to meet with people no matter who shows up, not only in the rooms where we are but in the coffee shops and in the offices when we go around to meet employees.
So, how do we get more people out? It’s a good question for this Assembly because as I came back in here, I looked around the auditorium and there’s not a soul in here but the work we do is important. We come here day after day, sometimes people show up. I know we’re wired in for people. People in the communities value the fact that central agency folks, especially finance people, take the time to go out there. How do we do that? There has been advice provided and we’ll look at the struggle of trying to do our budget consultations, the timing, because it ties in with business plan reviews, the work that we do, advertising, trying to figure out ways that we don’t conflict with community activities. One of the challenges, being we have to book so far ahead, by the time we get there, other things could overtake us. I think there are ways and we look forward to feedback from the Members. Thank you.
My next question is: What did we hear this year and how does that apply and how has it been applied to our current budget?
The work we do is cumulative and every Assembly builds on the work of previous Assemblies. Every budget builds on the work of previous budgets. The 17th Assembly charted out a bunch of priorities that we’ve been trying to implement. We’ve done things that the communities have asked us to do. We’ve put more money into prevention. We’ve protected programs and services. We’ve beefed up our capital plan in the places like the Far North. We’ve put in projects that are going to help not only provide infrastructure but some employment.
As I pointed out before, this is not a situation where communities are sitting there and it’s a blank slate. They have MLAs that sit in this building – and I commended MLAs prior to this – who reflect the views of their constituencies to a great degree. Plus, we all travel. It just gives us a chance to put faces to names and to hear firsthand many of the things we already know or think, or we know are critical principles and values of the Northwest Territories and of government, and in some cases they give us good advice, regional advice that we can look at when we come back. It may not be reflected in the budget, but it could be reflected in how the departments adjust their business on a day-to-day basis. Thank you.
I would like a specific example of what, out of this year’s budget dialogue, came out from the public, because I’m concerned the presentation was just made, the presentation was there, the public was heard, but nothing was implemented.
What specifically was implemented from this budget dialogue will be going forward or was implemented to this budget?
Let me give a couple of examples. There are a legion I could give, but let me give a couple.
The Western Arctic Geomatics Centre we’re setting up in Inuvik. It came up that we need to look at getting stuff out of Yellowknife; we need to tie into the work of the fibre optic line; we need to do a better job now that we’re the land owners post-devolution, and we need to invest money to do that and we’ve done that with the Western Geomatics.
We committed to decentralization, and one of the places that we’re going to decentralize to: some positions from ITI parks to Hay River.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
This is the problem that I have, is I think that those park positions were in the budget before the budget dialogue. So, I’m looking for specific examples from the budget dialogue that were implemented. We already knew about the fibre optic line; we already knew some of this stuff. I’ll even go back to the previous budget dialogues.
What has the department learned from the public, has implemented and put into our budget process and into the operations of the government?
Let me use another example. We put, I think, $425,000 into doing an Integrated Case Management Pilot Project, of which Inuvik and Yellowknife and, I believe, Hay River are going to be beneficiaries to push the departments that deal in the social envelope to integrate their case management approach so that when they deal with individuals and clients with multiple presenting problems, they do it in an integrated, coordinated way. A goal we’ve been striving to get done ever since I can remember and I’m in my 40th year now in government. We believe that maybe this will help us turn the corner on that. That’s a specific one.
If we want to look back, the Fibre Optic Link has had a life in the previous Assembly, and as we build off the work of that Assembly, we’ve now broken ground, we’ve got countries beating the path to the door of Inuvik. We’ve put in the Western Arctic Geomatics Centre to build off of the opportunities that the Fibre Optic Link provides. I would be glad to maybe share again a copy of the budget address with my colleague for Hay River North because it is replete with all the fine things that this Legislative Assembly has asked to get done that we are doing. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Earlier in the day I spoke about the need to get more public housing units in Fort Simpson as well as begin a plan about doing a homelessness complex. I’d like to ask the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation – I know that we do have a Homelessness Strategy – what kind of supports are there in the Homelessness Strategy that can help with projects such as this. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right; we do have a Homelessness Strategy. One of the parts of the strategy is the Northern Pathways to Housing, and it’s a pilot project that we’ve been trying to implement in the communities. I think we have four communities that were identified. We have two communities, Aklavik and Behchoko, that actually have their proposal put together, and we have Fort Simpson and Fort Good Hope that we’re continuing to engage with, hoping they take us up on our offer.
It’s up to $100,000 to renovate an existing unit and there is ongoing funding of $70,000 over five years. That would go a long way in trying to help address some of the issues facing these smaller communities, and also it would be an opportunity there for some employment in a small community, because we do want to work with a community organization to deliver this program on our behalf. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
That’s certainly something that we can move towards. I was talking to my colleague Mr. Yakeleya, and the Housing Needs Survey of 2014 indicates the Nahendeh region, of course, is number one again in core needs. We had addressed that the last survey but it’s creeping back up again, and some of the issues are new and emerging young people and families. So I appreciate that answer about homelessness.
Can that program also work in conjunction with our Anti-Poverty Strategy and accessing more funds to make units available for the homeless in the regional centres like Fort Simpson? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, it is our hope to try and address the homelessness. It used to be that it was more of a regional issue, but I think we’re finding more and more that it’s continuing to branch out into a lot of the smaller communities and that’s one of the reasons that we’ve come up with this program to try and assist with that.
There are opportunities there to tie into the Anti-Poverty Strategy and all the different pieces of work we’ve got going out there. We have identified some money through our corporation to help deal with this and we’ll continue to do so. I think we have about four or five programs that are specific to design to help deal with homelessness activities across the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I’d like to thank the Minister for that answer. In addressing the homelessness, I think part of the issue in Fort Simpson, as well, is the lack of public housing. I indicated in my list, particularly for single people there’s a list that’s almost 30 people long. In fact, a couple of the applicants have been on that list for about seven years.
So I would just like to know, how are we addressing increasing public units in the community of Fort Simpson, especially in light of there being a private developer that has 12 to 14 units and I think they may be shut down within the next year or two, as well, and that will certainly increase the need for more units for Fort Simpson. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, first of all, the person who has been waiting for seven years, I would have to look into that. As I was saying the other day, there are many reasons people are on a waiting list, but one of the requirements of receiving support from income support is to be on the waiting list – they could be on the waiting list even with support from income support – but also paying off their arrears. I’ve seen a number of cases where they’ve been on the waiting list for a long time and taking care of their arrears and they were, in fact, allocated housing units once their arrears were paid off. I commend them for that. There are a couple of cases where they’ve been on a repayment plan for a number of years, but they’ve seen that through and are now in public housing.
As far as increasing the public housing stock in the Member’s community, we do use the Community Needs Survey that we just completed in 2014, to help identify some of the communities and the most in need. Again, the Member pointed out that his region was number one, so we use that in helping to allocate units to a particular community.
I mean, we’re challenged with some of the funding decline, but we’re taking steps to try and deal with that issue. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. In using the housing needs assessment, if in this case of the assessment being done in 2013-2014, I wonder if I can ask the Minister if he can check with his officials if they’re aware of this private housing provider about his units, 12 to 14 units being shut down and how that would affect the current needs assessment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I’ll be glad to have a conversation with the officials and ask them about the units being shut down in Fort Simpson and how that’s going to affect our numbers there. I will gather that information and I will have conversations with the Member. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement earlier today, I mentioned that as a nation we are facing an affordable public housing crisis. With only 23 years left in the declining funding model from Ottawa, the NWT is being saddled with decisions on affordability, adequacy and quality in its annual public housing budgets. My questions today are for the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation.
Recently the Minister was in Ottawa with his Cabinet colleagues discussing the infrastructure needs for Northerners with his federal counterparts. We know that an announcement for $18 million over five years for the extension of the Affordable Housing Agreement followed.
Can the Minister inform the House, what does this extension mean and does this deal with the shortcomings of a declining CMHC funding model? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The agreement was an extension to the Investment in Northern Housing Initiative that provided $1.8 million annually from the federal government, which is matched by the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation. So that gives us about $3.6 million in investment over the next five years.
We’ve used these funds in the past to help deal with some of the programs to help low and modest income homeownership repairs, and it doesn’t address the problem of declining federal funding to operate social housing.
We’re continuing to have discussions with our counterpart in Ottawa on this issue. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, we know that CMHC funding for the Northwest Territories is declining from $21 million in 2001 to zero by 2038 with only 23 years left in funding. We also know that 50 percent of our housing stock today is over 30 years old or more.
Can the Minister tell us, what is the current strategy of the NWT Housing Corporation in dealing with these two very important problems? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, first of all, we’re very fortunate that the 17th Legislative Assembly has added about $2.1 million annually to the NWT Housing Corp to help offset some of the decline in federal funding. We do have a long-term strategy. I mean, we would hope that the federal government enters into an arrangement on public housing for long-term, stable funding in partnership with us, because we see that as a way of going forward.
But we are taking steps to address the declining funding. I’ve spoken to this before. We’re building more multi-family energy-efficient units to help with that. We’ve done about 700 retrofits to existing units during the life of this 17th Assembly. We’ve invested in energy initiatives like solar and biomass. We’re also realigned our rent scales and we’ve improved the administrative efficiencies of our operation with the local housing authorities. I have to give a shout out to the local housing authorities, not only to them but to the clients because many of them are stepping up to the plate and starting to honour the commitments that they’ve made. That’s why I made the announcement during my opening remarks yesterday that the collection rate is at 97 percent, so I think a huge shout out should go to them.
This helps us deal with the sustainability of our public housing stock, because if we can collect rent, then we can reinvest that money and not have to count so much on the declining federal funding. So we’re taking steps to deal with that, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, of course managing our assets better will result in a healthier balance sheet. This is a given. We know that there are about 400 mortgages still being held by the Housing Corporation and this has not always been a smoothly run area. Collection rates were around 30 percent back in 2012 with arrears totaling about $16 million, then came the Revised Mortgage Balance Program to deal with that.
Can the Minister inform the House today, what is the current status of this Revised Mortgage Balance Program and what is our current rate of collection and how are we dealing with this balance of arrears? Thank you.
The Member is correct that we did introduce a Revised Mortgage Balance Program near the end of 2012. We gave homeowners with mortgages with the NWT Housing Corporation a chance to get a fresh start with predictable, fair monthly rent. Total arrears in the mortgage portfolio have been reduced from $16.5 million to $9.1 million over the last couple of years. A majority of the clients have actually opted into the new program and collection rates have been in the 70 to 80 percent range for these clients. We have about 115 clients that have not entered the new program for one reason or another and collections among these clients are very low. A lot of these clients we’re now talking to legal counsel, pursue collections through the courts. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With 2,700 rental units being managed by local housing authorities across the NWT, again, managing our rental collection, and if done properly, will help the bottom line.
So I do applaud the good work that the Minister and Housing Corporation has done in cleaning up this backlog of a low collection rate, which back in 2008 was about 71 percent and as we heard today, I got the number 97 percent today. So that’s a good job. That said, we still have some LHOs today that have collection rates under 70 percent.
What is the Minister doing to improve these rental collections in those specific communities? Thank you.
There are about three elements to the collection approach for our rental units. First of all, we need to improve the collection of current rent and we did note that 97 percent was a good sign that progress is being made, and I think we see that in all areas of the Northwest Territories.
Secondly, we need to ensure that those who have accumulated arrears enter into some form of repayment plan, and we do obtain rental officer orders for these tenants. We’re currently seeing the number of tenants with large arrears declining as people are starting to dig themselves out of the hole, and we still need to engage with collection of former residents. Because you moved out of one of our units, that doesn’t change the amount that you owe to the NWT Housing Corporation.
As the Member noted, we had a couple of LHOs that had collection rates under 70 percent last year. We’re working with the LHOs to ensure that they’re obtaining rental officer orders for tenants not paying their rent. At the same time, we want to work with tenants to enter into a repayment plan because our goal is to house people, not to evict them, and this goes a long way.
Again, I give a shout out to those that are honouring the commitments that they’ve made because we have seen a bit of an improvement. I just said that in a lot of these communities they do run a high risk of eviction if they don’t keep up with their rental payments and their arrears. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
