Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question today is for the Minister of Housing. Today we heard some questions regarding the alcohol and drug issue that we continue to see and face in the Northwest Territories. Meanwhile we also have a housing issue. I would like to put the two together and talk about how we can address that and try to deal with both problems. That is going to the root cause of where the drugs are coming from, why people are in the situation they are. I would like to ask the Minister of Housing what is the policy regarding tenants who are accessing housing programs in our small communities, or even in our larger centres that are also engaging in illegal activities such as bootlegging and selling of drugs to people of the Northwest Territories? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We don’t condone any kind of illegal activities in our public housing units. Especially the LHOs usually have a zero tolerance policy. If someone is convicted of illegal activity in their unit, then their residency will be terminated. Thank you.
Thank you. I’d like to ask the Minister, are there any different sizes of penalties depending on the infractions that are put forth by the tenant whether it’s bootlegging, selling of hard drugs or recreational drugs, even such things as gambling? Is there any difference in terms of the penalties that these tenants would be enforced with? Thank you.
Thank you. This would apply to all criminal activity that takes place in the unit or that they’re charged for and convicted. So it would apply to all. There’s no different sized penalty for different convictions. Thank you.
Thank you. I really commend the work that Housing has been doing on this situation and hope that they do have a plan where we can start looking at tenants who are abusing this program. It’s still contributing to our social problems by feeding these addictions to the people of the Northwest Territories. In regard to tenants being evicted, would the same enforcement be put on all tenants of the dwelling or all people on the leasing agreement? Can the Minister please confirm who would all be infracted with this penalty? Thank you.
Thank you. That is one of the downsides of this and sometimes there’s unintended fallout from the leaseholder being convicted of any illegal activity, and that would apply to the members because they’re the main person on the lease, their residency would be terminated. Unfortunately, some of those caught in the crossfire are those that really have nothing to do with the activity, but because they’re residents of the unit, they would be looking for another place to stay. It’s unfortunate that it has to come to this and we do our best to try and make sure that all the tenants are housed adequately, but if there is criminal activity going on, unfortunately there’s some unintended fallout and there’s some innocent victims to all of this and it’s usually the children. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Once again I really enjoy hearing what the Minister has to say about making sure that people who are selling to our people actually are evicted, and that should cut down on our problems with the selling of alcohol and drugs to our people. Has the Minister done any work from the housing side of things with the Minister of Justice or RCMP division to find out who these people might be in our communities? Has there been any communication? Thank you.
Thank you. I don’t think we need to work with the RCMP or anybody to know who these people in the communities are. Every community knows who in the community are carrying out illegal activities. Unfortunately, some of them are tenants of public housing, but you can’t evict them even though the Residential Tenancy Act allows you to possibly evict them on assumption. The LHOs normally wait until they are convicted. But every community knows who these folks are and until we can get them convicted, unfortunately there’s not much we can do, as much as we would like to have them no longer tenants and carrying out illegal activities from subsidized public housing units. So we’ll have to continue to work diligently on that and make sure that we send a clear message out there that this type of behaviour will not be tolerated within the public Housing Corporation. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
