Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In follow-up to my Member’s statement, I’d like to ask the Minister, when will the department be adding units to the community of Aklavik?
Thank you, Mr. Blake. The Minister responsible for NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If the construction of a new seniors centre counts as units, we’re doing that right now. See how quick the Member is? As soon as he asks, it happens. But we continue to try and identify a lot of needs across the Northwest Territories, and we’re working on that. We continue to try to identify all of our needs. We just had a new community survey done. We used a lot of the information from that to determine where some of our strategic investments are going to be. Again, we continue to replace a lot of public housing units. I have to add that since 2006 we’ve spent over $18 million in Aklavik.
As I mentioned in my statement, I applaud the department for all the replacing of units, but there’s a big demand for new units as we have many people moving back to the community in a lot of our small communities. But with waiting lists of over two years, some young people who want to start their lives need units. There’s a big demand for single units like the multiplex units that we’ve discussed in this Assembly.
I’d like to ask the Minister, are there plans for a multiplex unit for the community in the near future?
One of the challenges that we face with the declining funding from CMHC is the ability to add new units. A lot of our public housing units now are replacement units and we’re replacing units that are already there. We’re struggling with that. We’re fortunate that the Legislative Assembly stepped up last year and filled in some of the gap, but it’s going to be awfully costly for them to be doing that every year.
Again, I’m not sure of the exact capital allotment for Aklavik. I will find the information and I will share it with the Member. We just, I think, replaced 10 units in Aklavik here just a couple of years ago because the old units were failing, and we put in five duplexes. The Member is correct; we are going to more of a multi-unit type configuration to help with energy costs and keeping our costs down.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
