Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am glad to inform the Members today of the work underway towards a new strategy for supporting the nine official aboriginal languages of the Northwest Territories.
In the late 1990s, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment consulted with communities about developing a long-term plan supporting our Territory’s traditional languages. The strategy, Revitalizing, Enhancing and Promoting Aboriginal Languages: Strategies for Supporting Aboriginal Languages, outlines what the government was doing in support of healthy aboriginal languages in our communities. It was meant as a “living document” and modified as aboriginal language communities continued explaining their needs, defining priorities and taking greater responsibility for achieving their language goals.
In 2008, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment proposed renewing the strategy. The first step in the process was conducting a review of the current strategy, identifying areas where it can be updated and improved. The final report was submitted in November of 2009.
At the end of March, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment hosted the Aboriginal Languages Symposium in Yellowknife. The symposium was a great success, drawing over 200 delegates representing official language
communities, including elders, youth, language speakers, practitioners and other stakeholders.
Over the three days of presentations, meetings and workshops, we heard many good and innovative ideas of how to increase support for our traditional languages. I was impressed by the level of passion and commitment in the room, especially from our elders who inspired us not to forget where we come from. The ideas generated at the symposium will be posted on the Department of Education, Culture and Employment website shortly and will play a key role in shaping the new strategy. I would like to acknowledge Mr. Kevin Menicoche, MLA for Nahendeh and the chair of the Standing Committee on Government Operations, for co-hosting the symposium with me. Moving forward, we are planning more meetings and will table the final strategy in the fall session of the Legislative Assembly.
Once finished, the new strategy will guide the Government of the Northwest Territories on decisions about policy, priorities and supporting aboriginal languages over the coming years.
I am confident that by continuing working together, we will see more Northerners proudly using the traditional languages of their cultures.
Mr. Speaker, as Minister responsible for languages, I am also very excited to announce that on June 22nd and 23rd, the Government of the Northwest Territories is hosting the Ministerial Conference on the Canadian Francophonie for the first time. This conference is being co-chaired with the federal Minister for Official Languages, the Honourable James Moore. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Mr. Speaker, as outlined in the Department of Health and Social Services action plan, A Foundation for Change, we are taking actions to ensure the accessibility to health care services is optimized for NWT residents.
As Members are aware, the incidence of colorectal cancer in the Northwest Territories is among the highest in the country. Men are 1.5 times more likely, and women 1.3 times more likely, to be diagnosed with colorectal cancer than their Canadian counterparts. Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the Territory for both men and women. NWT Colorectal Cancer Advisory Committee in November 2009 report cites that 20 residents are diagnosed with this type of cancer each year in the NWT.
For this reason, in January of this year NWT Colorectal Cancer Screening Guidelines was issued by the department. The response to this important preventative measure has been very positive and has resulted in a long wait-list for endoscopy procedures. For non-urgent endoscopic procedures such as colonoscopy, gastroscopy and cystoscopy, the current wait-list for non-urgent procedure is up to two years.
To respond to this need and to reduce the wait times, I am pleased to announce today that the endoscopy blitz will take place in Yellowknife, Hay River and Inuvik. This involves the work of both local and locum specialists and the cooperation of many health authority staff who will coordinate this schedule.
For the first time, two one-week endoscopy blitzes are planned in Hay River; one from May 25 to 29 and one from September 21 to 25. The procedures will be performed by a specialist at a rate of 10 procedures per day. A total of 100 endoscopies will be performed on high need patients during the two weeks on clients from the South Slave region. This will more than complete the urgent and semi-urgent cases for the entire South Slave region.
For Beaufort-Delta region, plans are underway to have its own endoscopy blitz in the fall. This blitz will serve clients from the Sahtu region as well as Beaufort-Delta, who are currently on a waiting list.
Mr. Speaker, Stanton Territorial Health Authority is also finalizing a plan to maximize efficiency and to increase the number of procedures being performed to 10 procedures per day in order to reduce its wait-list. Together with two blitzes being planned in Hay River and Beaufort-Delta, we will decrease the wait-list at Stanton Hospital.
Mr. Speaker, endoscopy is a common procedure which includes colonoscopy and gastroscopy. Gastroscopy detects cancer of the stomach. The good news is that colorectal cancer is preventable, treatable and beatable. If detected early, this disease can be successfully treated 90 percent of the time.
Mr. Speaker, it is also important to note that wait-lists are consistently monitored and updated by clinicians based on need. As mentioned, we have wait-lists, and will continue to do so, as does the rest of Canada. Access to specialists and medical equipment continues to be a challenge.
By consistently monitoring and updating the wait-list and making better use of all of our health facilities and staff and working closely with our authorities, we are able to put together this territorial service plan to better serve our residents all across our regions.
I would like to thank the CEOs and medical directors in each authority for their leadership and commitment. It is by working as a territorial team, as envisioned in Foundation for Change action plan, that we will continue to meet the challenges of delivering essential medical services to the NWT residents.
I would also like to advise the House that in the next few days I will be announcing a mammography blitz in South Slave region aimed at improving breast health screening and early detection of breast cancer. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I had an opportunity to travel to 10 communities with the Social Programs committee on the review of the child and family services legislation. As part of the tour we took the time to listen to the MLAs, community leaders, and also through public meetings hear from the residents throughout the Northwest Territories.
We had the opportunity to get an insight to the challenges all communities are facing. One thing that stood out in my mind, of the challenges that they are facing in program and service delivery, was the lack of programs and services being delivered in our communities and housing. Without these fundamental programs and services, a lot of the government initiatives cannot be delivered.
In regard to the area of housing, it was very appalling to see the number of public housing units boarded up in these communities, yet communities insist on realizing that housing is one of the biggest challenges that they’re facing.
We as a government have to do a better job of ensuring the services we deliver and the challenges that we face such as housing. We have to ensure that we can not only deliver those programs and services but meet the fundamental needs of our residents.
From the Hay River Reserve we noted 12 units which were boarded up, because they were not being provided to the residents of the community. In talking to the chief and council we were told that they had asked the Housing Corporation to remove the housing from the reserve because they were not being used or occupied.
We heard the same thing in Fort Liard where a lot of money was put into the Kotaneelee Housing Project. Millions of dollars were expended on this retrofit and yet a lot of those units are boarded up and not being used because of vandalism.
We have to find a way to ensure that the programs and services we do deliver are used, are accessible, and are providing value to our communities. Hearing from the head nurse in Fort Liard, she said that they asked for the problem, the question directly, what is the biggest challenge you see here in Fort Liard. All she said was housing, housing, housing.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today my Member’s statement is on substance abuse programs. Communities all across the Territories are continuously struggling with severe substance abuse problems. I’m sad to say that we’re leading in Canada in many of these areas as this problem progresses. Even more sad to say is that communities are coping with these challenges alone and there is very little support from this government.
I have spoken with the mayor of Tuktoyaktuk. He appreciates a contribution commitment for the years to run their centre. We hope we can start helping the people in similar ways as the House of Hope, which was operating as a place for people to go and gather and talk to counsellors about their addictions and evenings of fun things to interact free of alcohol. Funding is limited in the short term and more is needed. It is unreasonable for the government to expect community governments to contribute considerable amounts of their operational funding.
More than ever we need continuous support since we have, in Tuk, alcohol rationing in the community. We have compared the notes, since 2009 to 2010 that the criminal reports have been cut in half already. I feel alcohol restrictions are working, but we need support from our people to better ourselves. What we can hope for is to keep lobbying for the long-term system that we can work continuously, that we can work and plan our way to the future. With the residential school funding in jeopardy, this government needs to support small, remote communities even more than before.
The substance abuse situation and lack of real support services is in crisis. The Northwest Territories has been one of the highest levels of addiction needs per capita in Canada with one of the lowest expenditures in program assistance. This government continuously criticizes the lack of real initiatives that comes against the war against drugs and other forms of subsistence abuse, especially for our youth.
The government is in an excellent position to take the lead, work with all levels of government, including the federal government and organizations to create meaningful programs and infrastructure.
Mr. Speaker, I understand the government continues to spend millions out of the province in support resources.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
Mr. Speaker, I see the government continues to spend millions out of province in support resources only for participants to return to their home communities without aftercare. That’s not only not compassionate, it makes no business sense, Mr. Speaker.
The root of all problems comes from these issues: kids not doing well in school, people in an endless cycle of social assistance, and dependencies on drugs and alcohol. The fact the communities lack real support from returning from substance abuse treatment is a shame, Mr. Speaker. I will have questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services at the appropriate time. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to raise an issue today that I believe is something this government cannot continue to ignore. This issue is the impending closure of the City Centre Airport in Edmonton.
The City Centre Airport receives approximately 4,500 medevac flights per year from northern Alberta, Northwest Territories and Nunavut. About 1,000 of these flights originate in the Northwest Territories. Of the 1,000 flights, typically 10 percent are of a critical nature. The Cross Cancer Clinic, Stollery Children’s Hospital and other health facilities at the University and Royal Alexandra Hospitals are established to serve the needs of critical care patients arriving from the Northwest Territories by medevac. The closure of the City Centre Airport will undoubtedly put lives in peril and cost this government thousands of dollars more in transporting our residents from the international airport.
Mr. Speaker, in an emergency situation, a STARS helicopter service will charge $2,500 an hour, and at the best of times it will take 30 minutes to get a patient from the international airport into a major hospital. A ground ambulance for a return trip to the international airport would be in the neighbourhood of $700.
Mr. Speaker, as the Members of this House are well aware, all jurisdictions across this country are dealing with ever-growing expenditures in health care. Here is an example of the City of Edmonton, who like to say they are the gateway to the North, showing little regard for the safety and well-being of our residents.
Make no mistake about it, Mr. Speaker, the closure of the Edmonton City Centre Airport will increase health risks for NWT residents. NWT residents will be exposed to longer flight times and riskier hospital transfers. And again, these increased patient risks will be accompanied by increased costs.
Mr. Speaker, where is our Health Minister at in this process? Has she had discussions with the mayor of Edmonton, the Premier or the Health Minister in Alberta to convey obvious concerns that this government would have? I have not heard her say anything publicly about it. Is she waiting for the bulldozers to move in or what, Mr. Speaker?
In life and death situations, minutes count and we owe it to our residents to champion the fight to keep the City Centre Airport open. We need to ensure all of our citizens have the best access to medical services when they need it the most. We need to find allies in northern MPs, MLAs and municipal politicians to lobby the City of Edmonton and province of Alberta to try and keep this airport open.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
This closure will affect each and every community in the Northwest Territories and all of our residents. In the North, air ambulance service is a service that our residents depend on. Why doesn’t our government have anything at all to say about the closure of the City Centre Airport in Edmonton? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
MEMBER’S STATEMENT ON
MOTORCYCLE RIDE FOR DAD
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Motorcycle Ride for Dad is an event that raises funds and awareness to combat prostate cancer. The ride is in its 10th year nationally and this is the first year that it will be happening in the Northwest Territories. To date, the national ride is involved with over 100,000 people and raised over $5 million. The NWT Ride for Dad is proud to be adding to these impressive figures.
Prostate cancer is a deadly disease that most men try not to think about. In fact, most patients don’t even know they have it. Nationally, there are an estimated one million cases, 80 percent of which are undiagnosed. If caught early, this disease is curable and the ride is trying to make sure that men are talking to their doctors and, if necessary, getting tested.
The NWT Motorcycle Ride for Dad is also trying to make this a truly territorial event by encouraging riders from all over the Territory to take part. People who want to take part in the ride do not have to be a rider. They can get pledges to be a passenger if they know someone who has a motorcycle or they can raise pledges as a spectator. The ride is also always looking for donations, sponsors and volunteers.
Mr. Speaker, the ride will take place on Sunday, June 6, and will include a parade through Yellowknife, a poker run and a barbeque afterwards. Money raised from this event will go towards education awareness campaigns right here in the Northwest Territories. These funds will help to provide information about this disease and inform men about the risks of contracting prostate cancer, and encourages them to see their doctors and become better informed. So far there has been a huge amount of interest from sponsors and the general public and this is shaping up to be an excellent first year for what many hope will be an annual event in the Northwest Territories.
People interested in volunteering or making a donation can contact @email and people who want more information can visit the website at www.motorcycleridefordad.org\nwt. Please support this worthwhile cause. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Imagine going to the store and paying $8 for two kilograms of sugar or paying $4 for a litre of milk. Imagine not being able to cash a government cheque or if you do cash it, only getting half the cash and getting an IOU for the balance or even less; maybe getting $200 or $300 cash and the rest goes onto your account.
If you are living in the Sahtu community of Fort Good Hope, you wouldn’t have to imagine this, Mr. Speaker. You would be living it in colour or in black and white. In most of our small communities there are limited options for grocery shopping and cashing cheques, making it harder still the fact that perhaps eight months of the year there is no winter road. So we have no option but to shop locally and then in Fort Good Hope one of the two stores in town burned down and the option was even more limited. Everything is flown into the one store. Boy, oh, boy, you sure have to pay.
Mr. Speaker, in Fort Good Hope, people are paying $8.99 for a 2.5 kilogram bag of flour, $7.49 for 72 tea bags. Recent figures on the average weekly cost for a family food basket shows the cost in the Sahtu being almost twice as high as in Yellowknife.
Mr. Speaker, the people of Fort Good Hope need our help. At the co-op, the people own the building and the business. By gosh, it sure doesn’t seem a darn thing to them. They are getting gouged from this government through its fuel supplier or transportation company when it gets in trouble, by not getting enough gas for the community or subsidize the cost. I think we have to subsidize the cost of food in Fort Good Hope. I know fuel for cars and trucks and for houses is important, but, by golly, fuel for our children’s bellies has to be seen to be even more important. People hope that the winter road prices at the co-op would come down but that hasn’t happened. I think we need to declare a state of emergency or something, because if we don’t have a good job in Fort Good Hope, there are not too many good high paying jobs there. You cannot feed yourself or your family. You continue to go and get...
Mr. Speaker, what the co-op is doing, the cashing of cheques, sure seems wrong to me, giving an IOU or forcing to pay three-quarters of your cheque onto your account. Isn’t that extortion, Mr. Speaker? This is where the government can, and must, stand up for the people. It is time we got to sort this out. It is time we protect our people first and foremost. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government tabled their response to the electricity rate review and Power Corporation review recently. I would like to provide some additional perspectives on that.
First I would like to start with a few positive results of the recommendations in that report. The first is that a reduction in power rates for commercial users is real and especially in the very expensive communities. We need additional local economic development and this will hopefully help businesses with that.
The second is collapsing the rate system from 33 to seven rate zones. Surely we will enjoy a modest administrative gain there and a slight reduction in cost.
Finally, the government has agreed to stabilize rates, with no additional costs for the next two years. I think that will be a welcome relief to our ratepayers, although at what cost?
Mr. Speaker, what is the government really doing here? In my mind, they are largely simply shifting our costs from upfront rate rider ratepayer costs to behind the scenes costs to taxpayers, and they’re doing this in three ways. The first is buying out the rate riders at the rate of $3 million per year for the next two years, and, by the way, where is that money coming from? That’s money coming from the $60 million fund slated supposedly for energy efficiency and renewable energy, real reductions in costs. So we’re getting this artificial transfer of dollars to buy out the rate riders.
Secondly, we’re forgiving the dividends that the Power Corp normally pays to the government, which indirectly we use to help pay the subsidies. So, again, the taxpayer is picking up those subsidies which used to be minimized through those dividends.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, we’re adjusting our thresholds in communities where in every single diesel community the average consumption is already well below the current threshold of 700. We’re raising it to 1,000. We’re telling people go spend more energy, use more energy and we’ll provide the huge subsidies to cover those costs, which I don’t think is the message we really want, and it was the one saving grace of the current system. So that reduces the personal incentive to reduce energy use and offering these up as savings to local resident users is the ultimate shell game because, of course, those residents are not using that energy now.
Mr. Bromley, your time for your Member’s statements is expired.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, we can expect in a couple of years from now a real shock as these realities of high fossil fuel prices and water shortages click in, as they of course will.
We’ve spent countless dollars on these reviews. I’ll be asking how much. It’s money that could have been spent on real reductions to real costs. What could those have been? The Lutselk’e and Whati mini-hydro projects, action on residual heat recovery in individual communities, the major savings the Arctic Energy Alliance has pointed out from switching water heaters, real action on local electrical generation through biomass, grid system development and so on.
So, Mr. Speaker, it’s time to stop this endless musing and jump into the future. I’ll file this report, along with all the others, and continue to devote my energy to getting this government to stop talking and start acting. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to follow up on my colleague Mr. Bromley’s comments and speak, as well, about the electricity review response, and we are not in collusion.
As Members are aware, the Minister of ITI tabled the government’s response last week and the changes outlined in that report will have a huge impact on power rates for our NWT communities, and I feel it is a significant achievement for this Assembly. Though, Mr. Speaker, I cannot fully endorse the report.
I’m concerned about the philosophy, which underpins the substance of the report, and I have concerns about some of the recommendations. There’s no doubt that most of our residents struggle with the high cost of living and that one of our greatest costs is the cost of power. The plan outlined in the government’s response will positively impact our residents by reducing their cost of living, both at home and at the store.
Mr. Speaker, we’ve missed the golden opportunity that this review process offered us. We had an opportunity to make substantial and real changes to the way our electricity system operates. We could have found substantive efficiencies and reduced the huge subsidies that the government pays out to keep our power costs down, but that we did not do. Instead we did minimal revamping, shuffled the subsidies from one pocket to another and missed a great opportunity to effect real change and to find real and systemic savings.
What am I worried about? A couple of things. Firstly, this is only a two-year plan and in that two years rate riders will be paid off to the tune of about $6 million; taxpayer dollars. Power rates will be frozen, but what increases will be waiting to pounce on us in the fall of 2012? Production costs, fuel, materials and so on never seem to go down, only up, and that can only result in increased power rates. I fear a jump in our power rates at the end of this two-year period. I think we’re going to experience rate shock.
Secondly, there will be no adjustment of the power rates for government customers at this time. I see that as artificially inflating NTPC’s revenues and I ask again what will be the impact on rates and on the system when those are reduced as we are told that they will be?
There are some elements of this plan which are positive, it’s not all bad, but I regret that both the electricity and the NTPC reports did not look for systemic changes which would reduce the cost of power generation and distribution. Instead we have a report that moves money from the government’s right hand to its left hand and which leaves us with an uncertain electrical future.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. [English translation not provided.]
In this month’s edition of The Native Journal there’s a news brief about investment of $7 million by DIAND in the Atlantic region. Almost half of this funding is being directed to water and wastewater projects in First Nation communities. Funded projects include water and sewer lot development, water and wastewater improvements, and water tank maintenance. All across Canada there are issues and challenges related to water and wastewater management. There are also problems in the Northwest Territories.
Presently the health inspector is checking Wrigley’s water tanks in the homes to determine their safety, and residents have also asked the doctor in Fort Simpson to do some tests. The people in Wrigley have experienced problems with their water tanks. The water in Wrigley is very hard and this leads to scale forming and building up on the inside of water pipes. This, in turn, leads to clogged water pipes that block the water tank flow. Eventually the pipes are clogged and these tanks and pipes must be replaced.
Many homeowners cannot afford to replace their water tanks. If there are arrears with the Housing Corporation with payments, they cannot access funds from any of our housing programs.
Clean water is a health issue. There are cases where DIAND had provided funding for tank replacement. I believe that this government, either through the Housing Corporation or Health and Social Services, should provide program funding to residents of Wrigley to maintain and replace water tanks. In this way the most basic necessity of healthy, clean water, will be available to them.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Not by collusion, I want to speak to the electricity rate review and the good news. Minister Bob McLeod was down to Hay River on the weekend and spoke to the NWT Association of Communities, and the news about the power rates was well received and the people are looking forward very much to those next couple of years of some relief on their power bills.
We need to view that two years as a window of opportunity to get very serious with that substantial amount of money that we have set aside as a government to consider green energy initiatives. One of those is the whole idea of biomass. I’m happy and proud of the government that they have been moving toward pellet boilers in some of the capital infrastructure in the South Slave and even here in Yellowknife. We only have this money set aside for a certain amount of time and we need to make sure it is well used.
I have characterized this temporary offset that will help with the cost of living over the next two years as just a time in which we need to take that $60 million and literally do an end run on some of the things that are costing the people of the Northwest Territories so much in our communities. That is in the area of energy.
We have an opportunity with the vegetation and inventory of trees in the Northwest Territories to create a pellet mill here to make pellets. We have a transportation infrastructure in Hay River to even ship those pellets down the Mackenzie River to other communities. The inventories are there. The capital, I believe, is there and the money that we’ve set aside. And we need to find a proponent, maybe an operator, we need to find a location. Might I suggest it should be Hay River? We have people there who are already very experienced in the sawmill business. The product that would be turned into pellets could be a by-product of the harvesting that would be done and the loggable, sizable trees that could be turned into lumber.
We have a great opportunity before us, but I would like the energy and heat created from the $60 million to be more than the BTU created by the burning up of the many studies that we could waste it on.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Colleagues, before I proceed with the orders of the day I’d like to draw your attention to the visitor’s gallery and to the presence of Mr. Bruce McLaughlin, former Member of this House and representative from the riding of Pine Point.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize, as well, Mr. Bruce McLaughlin, former Minister, former Member of the House.
As well in the gallery today is Ed SchlemKo, director of flight operations for Airco from Edmonton, Mary Anne Stanway, who is with the Kingsway Business Association in Edmonton, and Dr. Joseph Fernando, aviation medicine specialist.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. If we’ve missed anyone in the gallery today, welcome to the Chamber. I hope you’re enjoying the proceedings. It’s always nice to have an audience in here.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the accomplishment of Frame Lake constituent Ms. Karen Horn. Ms. Horn is employed by Aurora College and she has been a stalwart at the Yellowknife Campus for many years now. She recently completed the first step towards a bachelor degree in Business Administration. At the YK Campus graduation held May 1st, Karen was one of the graduates receiving her Business Administration Certificate. I offer my congratulations and wish her every success as she continues her education journey.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are directed to the Minister of the Housing Corporation. In the last session there was a document tabled regarding the housing needs in the Northwest Territories. It showed that we are not meeting the needs of the residents of the Northwest Territories. If anything, things are getting worse. I think it’s important to realize that, as a corporation whose responsibility it is to deliver social housing in the Northwest Territories and to ensure that we’re able to bring down the needs of our residents and meet the challenges that we are facing.
One of the biggest challenges we’re facing, as I stated, in our term in the area of Fort Wrigley was a problem they are facing with overcrowding and mould in a lot of their residences. This is a problem not only to the health effects of the residents but also to the social effects of overcrowding.
One of the things that I’ve also mentioned in my statement was the number of houses that are sitting empty and boarded up, not being used. I think we have to do everything that we can to fill those residences. We’re hearing problems with staffing challenges with regard to staff housing. I know they’ve found a solution for Fort Resolution and hopefully they can implement that solution in other communities.
People in our communities are paying over $2,000 a month for rent in a social housing unit. Why aren’t those people qualified for lease units in those communities so they can occupy them so they are not left empty? Why is that the case?
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Housing Needs Survey that was recently completed does show that the needs have gone up, and I’ve said in this House before that our capital budget for the 2011-2012 fiscal year will use the Housing Needs Survey to determine where we allocate a lot of our capital projects.
We do have a lot of units that are vacant right now. I think at last count we had 224 across the Northwest Territories and 130 of them are under repair. We did have quite a significant investment from the federal government as far as the Housing Fund goes, so we have 130 under repair and we have some that are up for sale and some that are slated for demolition. So we are trying very hard to address the needs in the community and the Housing Needs Survey will go a long way in determining how we allocate our money.
Again, I believe one of the challenges we’re facing is dealing with the applications for these units and the length of time it’s taking to get people into these units. I’d like to ask the Minister, in light of the solution he found for Fort Resolution with regard to professional housing development where they put teachers into public housing, is that something we can look at for other communities? Can we look at the clients in social housing who are paying over $2,000 a month? Can we get them into a mortgage program, get them into these housing units so that these units are being occupied?
