Debates of March 10, 2009 (day 26)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question for Minister McLeod, Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation. Mr. Speaker, in light of the recent announcement of the housing funding that is coming to the Northwest Territories, I wanted to ask the Minister in terms of future plans going ahead. Would his Crown corporation look at sitting down with the regional bodies in the Sahtu or any other region and look at how they can design and make use of these units that are coming into the Northwest Territories? Would the Minister be able to look at some future consultation with the Sahtu region?

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of the Housing Corporation, Mr. Michael McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The new funding has not been decided upon, as we all know. The agreement has not been signed yet. We are anticipating that these new dollars will certainly assist us in the area of housing needs across the Territories. We would like to have something brought forward fairly quickly. I don’t believe that is going to give us an opportunity to meet with all regional leaders. Certainly we don’t have a budget to travel across the Territories and set those up. Our plan was to have our allocations based on some of the needs assessments that have been done, and have a discussion with Regular Members and my Cabinet colleagues and see if we can have everything in place for the new fiscal year as that is just around the corner. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I say this in terms of the uniqueness and challenges in the Sahtu to construct houses. I am very happy. Yesterday the Minister had some positive exchanges with Mr. Menicoche in terms of the threshold communities like Colville Lake or Fort Good Hope. They need to come together and look at some of the challenges in terms of land and buildings, in terms of reading requirements to obtain a house here. That is why I asked the Minister if he would consider from his department to bring people together in the Sahtu and look at some of the unique challenges of constructing these homes here and see where people can actually build the houses that are empty right now in the Sahtu.

Mr. Speaker, right now our biggest challenges in the communities, especially in the area of public housing that has been raised in this House many times, is having our units brought up to a better standard, having our units a lot more energy efficient and to place a lot of these units so our targets or intentions are to focus on doing some of that work in the public housing area, and also to look at the programs we have so that we can deliver more opportunity for private houses in the communities. Those are the two areas that I have been really looking at for the last while. Along with that, of course, we are doing some evaluations, some tweaking on our programs in terms of changing our thresholds and looking at providing a better forgivable mortgage if that is possible. There are a lot of things that we need to do that I have raised in this House and that Members have brought to my attention. Those are the areas that we are focusing on. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the challenges that we have in our region is the short construction period by the time the materials get to our region. Again, in terms of going forward, if the people from the Sahtu could somehow sit down with the district office and list some of the concerns from the 2008 Auditor General’s Report -- the inspection, the construction, the material -- this would be very beneficial to the corporation. Again, I would ask the Minister in his reviewing of this budget, would he be able to get the leaders and people from the Sahtu to sit down in the district office and say this is how we see things, housing in the Sahtu?

Again, I don’t know if there is going to be opportunity for me to do that. I am sure the Member has heard all the concerns from his leaders and his visits in his communities. He probably could package that up just as well and deliver it to us for consideration, Mr. Speaker. I would certainly be open to hearing anything that the community leaders want to bring to my attention.

I have heard from most of the community leaders over the last while. We have had opportunity to have some discussions around housing with some of the aboriginal governments, the Beaufort-Delta. The visit gave us a chance to talk to the Gwich’in on some of the issues and also the Inuvialuit. We have had discussions with the Akaitcho people also, Mr. Speaker. I would be glad, if there are other aboriginal governments that want to provide input, we would certainly be open to have that discussion.

I don’t think time is going to give us that opportunity between now and the time we need to have our houses on the ground, Mr. Speaker. We have two years to deliver $104 million worth of projects. We need to be able to hit the ground running and have them on the ground over this two-year window that we have in front of us. We understand the direction is use it or lose it. So we want to be able to spend all the money. We want to be able to put them into where the projects across the Territories have the needs in the area of housing lessened. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. A final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Certainly I will be sending over a housing package to the Minister in terms of the needs here. Again, Mr. Speaker, because of the uniqueness of the challenges in the Sahtu, hoping that over time here the Minister will be able to look at some of the unique challenges in the Sahtu. I think he needs to hear from the people in the communities who are actually right on the ground in terms of what challenges are faced here. Yesterday I received a call from an elder whose house was frozen up. They wouldn’t give any service because he was in arrears. This is an old man in Deline that Housing had a hard time with. Again, it would be more beneficial for the Minister to have a regional meeting with the leaders.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. I don’t think I heard a question there. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.