Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister has provided me with a briefing note. The Minister has provided me with some stats. The Minister has provided me with some further information, and oddly enough, all these three pieces of information conflict with each other. I’ve talked to the people in the community of Paulatuk and their information conflicts with all three pieces even further.
I’d like to ask the Minister of the Housing Corporation who is doing these particular assessments on these units, what is their qualification, what are their competencies and when were the assessments of these units in Paulatuk last done to know that they’re up to date, because the condition ratings given to me in these pieces of paper are not what’s actually on the ground, and I would challenge him to say that they’re being done by qualified, professional people who can make these proper assessments.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister responsible for Housing, Mr. R.C. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a lot of confidence in our LHO maintenance ability to do these condition ratings. We do have some training with them. The latest batch of condition ratings would have been completed as of March 31, 2014. Out of the 2,160 units across the NWT, we’ve got 2,146 that have been completed. They were completed as of March 31, and again, we do have a tremendous amount of confidence in our LHO maintenance staff’s ability to do these condition ratings as they have been doing them for a while.
I’m glad we have confidence in these people who deliver the program, because somebody who, obviously, we have confidence in said all the molding material was removed, area was treated, new material was installed, and by the way, that’s the fall of 2014. There is conflicting information with this work done. I’m speaking to people in the community. The Housing Corporation owns 75 percent of the housing units. There is nowhere else to go. They’re deplorable.
Will the Minister step this up and do an evaluation of all the housing in Paulatuk, because there are no options and nowhere to go, and people are living in unhealthy, unsanitary conditions there that need to be addressed now.
Two of our units in the community are very good, but I will commit to going in there and doing an assessment. We have people from our district office going up there all the time and working with the community, and some of the numbers may be different because the numbers that we use are the assets that we control. There may be some homeownership units that are in there that the residents might be counting amongst our units because Housing would have been responsible for building those units in the first place, but at the end of the day they’re homeownership units.
I will follow up and make sure that all of the information that we have is current and up to date, and I will share it with the Member as well as the MLA for Nunakput. Thank you.
Back to my very first question, I will accept that as an offer, but back to my first question. I want to find out what competencies that these people who are going to go in there and do these particular assessments. I suspect that the everyday person can spot mould, but are they aware of what type of mould it is and how dangerous it is?
We have overcrowding in that community and we have zero options. We own 60 of the 80 units in that town and there’s nowhere to go, but there are nine sitting empty with nothing being done, but your information provided to me says there’s only three. So we need to find out what’s actually happening on the ground. What is the Minister prepared to do?
As I said before, I’m prepared to confirm all of those numbers, any information. I’ll confirm the nine units, whether some of them are homeownership units that may have been just lumped together with our own assets.
As far as the mould issue goes and the competency, again, our folks on the ground, because there are more and more issues with mould, there are many remediations, and that we try to communicate to the residents of the communities, but once we identify a unit with mould, we either try to remediate it, or in some cases where it’s not being able to be remediated, we will dispose of the unit.
Again, I will confirm all that information and make sure all of the information correlates and I will share that with the Members. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re getting somewhere on this file and I want to be very clear. Will the Minister send proper professionals with appropriate credentials to go and assess those particular units, not send some secretary in there to walk out or some administrative assistant to walk in there, count heads, count bodies, whatever the case may be to say is your unit well. I want competent professionals that can go in there, assess them properly, develop a plan with the community and show them that the housing issues matter to them. Because right now I’m getting calls that there’s an oil spill in that town, people don’t know what’s going on, they see pads all over the ground, it’s springtime. That means that fuel could be going anywhere. We need to ensure that this community is safe and taken care of. Thank you.
I can assure the Member that this community is safe and is taken care of. As with every other community, there are small issues that we have to deal with from time to time. As far as the mould goes, our folks in the community are getting more educated on mould and its effects. If they see mould and they need a further opinion, we do have folks in the district offices now that have taken mould identification and remediation training. We will send them to the community as we did with another community in the Beau-Del where we heard in the community meeting that they had some issues with mould. The very next day we had one of our folks go in there that just completed the training, and I haven’t heard the latest out of that yet, but we’re looking forward to seeing that.
Again, I mean, I will make sure that in dealing with these issues that all those folks are qualified, and if there is some identification that they’re unable to work with, then they will call in the appropriate people. We’re not sending secretaries or administrative assistants into these units to do the condition ratings. All of our LHO maintenance people are qualified. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
