Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my statement regarding the Municipal and Community Affairs land swap deal with the City of Yellowknife and the developer. As I mentioned, MACA played a highly unusual role here setting up a deal directly with a developer, without city involvement. Typically the land is conveyed to the city and then the city sells the land and uses their income or revenue from that to manage the development. The city’s interest in this deal should have been obvious from the first moment swap negotiations began.
My first question is: Why did MACA not insist that the city be involved from the start of these negotiations? I ask that knowing that they passed legislation to try and stop this deal or frustrate it because they had been not involved. Why did MACA not insist that the city be involved from the start?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe the city was involved with this deal right from the beginning. In April 2010 they had applied to MACA for two parcels of land. One was one that they could turn over to Homes North, that Mr. Bromley references. There was a second parcel of land that they had kept for their own use. So we try working with the city as much as possible. We don’t get into direct competition with the city for the disposal of land because we would then become the seller of choice if we dealt directly with developers. The city was involved in the disposal of this property right from the start.
I want to say that very strictly speaking the Minister was correct; but, as I mentioned, the Minister did this deal and forced the city to accept it. They even passed legislation to try and frustrate it and had to eventually pass additional legislation to reverse that. The main concern here, other than the irregularity and the kafuffles that this has caused, is we have 0.6 percent vacancy in the city of Yellowknife. If you’re a young person trying to get a start, you need access to housing, and reasonably cost housing as a start. It’s the residents who suffer the consequences of such irregular deals. Given MACA’s role, and to some degree – we can argue about the degree – but to some degree, responsibility in creating this situation now confronting the city and the developer, what is the department prepared to do to assist in resolving the situation and to help the city alleviate the chronic lack of housing in Yellowknife?
We can dispose of the land and the developers can then work on trying to alleviate the lack of housing in the city, but I can commit to the Member that we thought this was a very simple land swap deal and it seems to have gone off the tracks a bit.
I will commit to the Member that I will follow up on this immediately and see if we can get this transfer done, because the developer had made an application to turn this into a subdivision and that’s all up in the air right now. I will commit to the Member that I will follow up on it and we will see what role MACA can play in trying to get this deal that’s been going on for almost two years now, try to get this deal done as quickly as possible because it would probably benefit the city and would benefit the developer, and hopefully at the end of the day it would benefit MACA because we are trying to dispose of this land. We make no profit from it. The financial beneficiaries of any Commissioner’s land within the city should be to the city, so that’s what we try and work out.
I very much appreciate the Minister’s commitment there. That shows a real willingness. I think everybody has learned, and I say the responsibility is shared amongst the various parties here. I think this helps quite a bit. Obviously, we hope this won’t happen again, but a good approach to that would be the transfer of all remaining unencumbered Commissioner’s land within the city boundaries to city control. Is that something that the Minister is considering or a transfer that he would support?
I won’t make that commitment right now but what we do do is work with communities to try to ensure that they have first dibs on all Commissioner’s land within their municipalities. We’ve had applications come in from communities on Commissioner’s land within their boundaries and we try to work with the communities as much as we can to ensure that they are the beneficiaries of it. I will again commit to the Member that I as Minister will have a look at how this issue played out and ensure that we don’t run into any further problems when we’re disposing of Commissioner’s land within municipalities in the future.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Very briefly, again I appreciate that commitment from the Minister. I appreciate his offer to see what can be done, because it’s taken two years and obviously under current economic conditions, costs have changed quite a bit. The city has been forced, really, to a more rigorous application of their cost recovery policies and so on, so that when we enter deals like this and the complexities that are involved, costs go up for all parties. I would appreciate it if the Minister could look into that situation, as well, that aspect of it, and see what might be done from our perspective.
I will follow up on how this all played out. This deal has taken longer than anticipated. We had hoped that all parties would be able to get together. We thought it was a very straightforward land swap but, unfortunately, it’s taken two years. I will follow up on all the details of the situation and see how we can prevent this from happening again in the future.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
