Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement earlier today with questions for the Minister of the NWT Housing Corporation. My statement today outlined a very sad chain of events for Cecelia Kell and an international embarrassment, obviously, for us. Could the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation tell me what steps have been taken to act on the UN recommendations and get Ms. Kell a home and pay the recommended compensation? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Minister of Housing, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re fully aware of the situation and we take the recommendations from the UN very, very seriously. We would like to try and set up a meeting with Ms. Kell to try and work out some details. We have six months to respond to the recommendations, but as of right now, we are trying to meet with this lady and work out the details. Thank you.
Thanks for the comments from the Minister. I know that the Minister recognizes that this is a serious situation and will do good work to get this rectified, and I ask that we would be kept apprised of the progress on that.
As the UN decision pointed out, Ms. Kell’s traumatic experiences point to the need for greater public understanding of property law and ensuring that clients of our LHO partners are aware of their rights. Since we are trying to stress the breaking down of silos and coordinated actions across government, such as through the development of the Anti-Poverty Strategy, can the Minister say how he intends to work with his ministerial colleagues to ensure, for example, the Department of Justice’s Legal Aid and Community Court Worker programs incorporate knowledge on rental rights into their services? Thank you.
Well, I can speak from the Housing perspective and say that we’ve got some checks and balances in place to ensure that a situation like this doesn’t happen again. One of the checks and balances is to not allow for a person to be removed from the lease without their notification, and I think that’s what happened in this particular case. I will commit to working with my counterparts and the Minister of Justice to see how we can better inform his department on some of the steps going forward, and the communities too. They have an opportunity to work with their tenant relations officer.
I think the recommendation from this has probably taught us a very valuable lesson in how we need to inform people of the particular rights they have. I believe we’ll start working on that when the rest of our tenant relations officers come in. Thank you.
Thanks for the comments from the Minister again. I’m not questioning the comments, but I do want to point out to the Minister that the final checks and balances are indeed the court system. This wasn’t just an NWT failure. This was a total Canadian failure. I think what we need is to bring the accountability and complete the circle. I would appreciate it if the Minister would commit to bringing that to committee on how, in fact, that will be done. We will know that our legal system, which is our final check and balance, will indeed be able to back up the systems that I know the Minister will be putting in place within Housing. Thank you.
I would be pleased to meet with committee. I mean, we have six months, obviously, to respond to the recommendations. We’re trying to get the pieces in place right now. But once we’ve completed all that work and I’ve had an opportunity to discuss with my counterpart from Justice, I think it might be prudent for both of us, actually, to come before committee and give them some time and explain to them how we plan on dealing with any situations. I don’t think we’ll have any more situations like this in the future. If we put the proper pieces in place, then that should rectify the problem that happened in this particular case. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks again for those comments. Again, of course, I wasn’t speaking about this case now. I’ve backed off and I’m speaking in a sort of a systemic issue, so I think the deadlines are sort of mute with respect to that.
Again, I have to be a bit reticent in just accepting the Minister’s intentions compared to what the final result is, because the recent update by the Auditor General on recommendations for improvements to the Housing Corporation operations some years ago found that there has been unsatisfactory progress on ensuring applications for housing are dealt with consistently and according to policy. In fact, if my memory serves, I think only 17 out of 45 were done correctly. This speaks to the need to ensure everyone gets equal treatment. Can the Minister say what steps his corporation is taking to finally move on these recommendations, when the improvements will be made and how the corporation will continue to monitor for compliance? And applications are a good example of what we’re talking about. Thank you.
I kept referring to this particular case in my answer before because this is the one that brought about this situation. In the overall picture, working with the Housing Corporation and the Auditor General’s report, obviously, that was from a few years ago, we’ve taken great steps in the meantime since then to improve how we work with our LHOs. One of the things we have done is we’re implementing a territorial-wide housing information system. I think that’s going to give us the ability to monitor the workings of the LHOs a lot closer. They’re doing a fine job out there, but we need to be a little more connected, I think is what I’m trying to say, and communicate a lot more. Also, we just announced the other day, we’re setting up an NWT Housing Appeal Committee, and I think this may go a long way, too, in addressing some of the concerns.
As far as the Auditor General’s report goes, I mean, we’ve listened to some of the recommendations. I think we’ve done a very good job in responding to some of the recommendations, and I think we’ll see a great improvement in the overall delivery of housing and the appeals system for tenants that feel they’ve been wronged. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
