Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We could talk about problems with housing and who it affects until the cows come home, as they say, but we clearly know it affects seniors, new families. It affects large and small communities in different ways, but equally in the sense of it’s a problem.

Mr. Speaker, we could talk about suitability of houses and certainly core needs. We can also talk about the vitality of the community being destroyed as the population leaves without housing options. I’ve cited lots of examples out there, so let’s start with one of the most important questions on this particular issue....

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to use my Member’s statement to talk about the facts, so here they are: In 2009 the NWT Community Housing Survey said that 19 percent of Northerners are in core need of housing. What matters little more than your health and your family than housing? Everything starts at home. While we continue to talk about revitalizing our declining population here in the Northwest Territories, we have communities suffering the negative effects of population leaving. But where do we start? Well, if there are no places to access housing, be it in Yellowknife, be it Paulatuk...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Frankly, I just can’t figure out how the Minister is proud of the job he’s doing and how he keeps saying we are doing a good job when he only builds one house per community per year on average. Those statistics speak for themselves. We’ll let Northerners judge the Minister, Mr. Speaker.

In summary, 19 percent of the houses in the Northwest Territories are in core need; 31.6 percent are houses with problems of some sort. Declining funding is a terrible thing, but it is a terrible crutch to lean on that as, oh my goodness, the funding has been drying up. We have seen...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll gladly take any one of those commitments, all or some or who knows what I’ll get, but I’ll certainly welcome every single one of them. Since, as I highlighted, the changes to the EI program, it now makes it more challenging for our northern workforce to find consistent, meaningful employment options. We’re now talking that you have to find well over five months of actual work to qualify for EI. Now, in a robust, working economy, not a problem. I accept any changes. But what is the department prepared for in this new shift where they’ve extended the hours one must...

Thank you. By way of example, the last figures I can find, of course under our NWT Bureau of Stats, is Beau-Del was at 54 percent, Deh Cho 50 percent, Sahtu 55, South Slave 63, Tlicho 39 percent and YK at 79, and that’s sort of territory-wide for the Minister’s benefit.

What job creation programs has this department created under the tenure of this Minister, and can he provide some examples of how many new jobs have been placed on the ground and where?

Mr. Speaker, the recent release of the Bureau of Stats numbers would give most people an opportunity to celebrate. What they do say is the fact that unemployment rates have reached a new one-year low. This is normally a good thing. But normally this doesn’t always tell you the whole story when you take a look at the bigger picture of what all the stats say. When you look closely at them, you actually see what the true figures are.

Employment figures have actually dropped, and I mean in this case they’ve gone south, literally and figuratively.

Participation in the employment sector, trying to get...

Thank you. Although actual employment rates are trending downwards, we’re going south, as I said, literally and figuratively. We’ve noticed that the federal government has slashed the EI program, which is going to now fall onto the territorial government to pick up the slack. As I said earlier today and I’ll just make one more point, which is the Yellowknife rate of unemployment is closer to 3.4 percent, and of course, as we all know here, the community unemployment rate is closer to 30 percent, if you’re lucky to be that low.

The reality here is, and my next question leads into, if the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I talked about concerns with employment rates, so I have questions for the Minister responsible for employment. In this particular case, that would be Mr. Lafferty.

Could Mr. Lafferty provide some examples of true unemployment figures in several of our communities, and I’ll allow him to pick his own examples of what the true unemployment figures are in some of our northern communities, please.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I said in my Member’s statement that the net effect would actually be awash because our growth and our federal grant transfer would actually cover the cost of those teachers. May I also briefly remind the Minister that he had pointed out in his February 6th statement that in 2013 we continued to lose population? What’s happening here is, year over year over year we continue to lose population.

My last question is simply this: Where have there been any results of population growth in the Northwest Territories under the tenure of this McLeod government?

I was proudly educated in the Northwest Territories, growing up in Fort Simpson and in Yellowknife. My education taught me that negative 218 persons is a lot. So when the Minister says to me – and remember, this is the gentleman in charge of our books and our finances – we’re not losing ground, perhaps the Minister of Finance can explain how a loss of 218 people isn’t a loss to the Northwest Territories and the Northwest Territories isn’t losing ground. Thank you.