Debates of October 18, 2006 (day 10)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the NWT Housing Corporation has a role as a Crown corporation under the GNWT to provide housing and housing programs to northern residents in need. Their degree of accountability to this Assembly is different because their budget comes from various sources, only a portion of which is voted by this government. As such, the line-by-line level of information in accompanying scrutiny by committee or Members is different and far less than the regular line departments of this government.

In years past there was a board of directors to provide governance to the NWT Housing Corporation. This currently does not exist. They have a great deal of autonomy and, needless to say, some of the activities they have undertaken in the past are lacking in positive outcomes, and that’s putting it politely.

As if that isn’t bad enough, they forge ahead to implement and undertake more large initiatives. In my opinion, they do so without having been required to visit the failures and shortcomings of their past. This gives me no confidence that the results are going to be any more focused, targeted, or successful than the work that they’ve done in the past.

I know there’s a comprehensive audit underway by the Auditor General’s office. By the time these findings come to light I believe more resources and more efforts will have gone awry. I can stand here and list a long litany of past boondoggles, but one only has to travel to some of the small communities to see what I saw this summer to know that this corporation has serious problems.

During our pre-budget consultation tour in August and driving around the community of Fort Liard and seeing the number of yards that had pallets of construction materials piled up, stamped 2003, 2004, 2005, for housing construction and retrofit, just sitting there collecting dust, sitting in people’s yards. In almost all the small communities we drive by boarded up dilapidated housing units. Why? And here we are having trouble finding developed land to build new units.

With this as a backdrop, imagine that the Housing Corporation is now embarking on a $100 million affordable housing initiative. When I’ve asked the Minister for information about the basis of this initiative, he holds up a four-page, four-year-old Bureau of Statistics housing survey. We can’t get straight answers to our questions. There’s a three-year rollout on this affordable housing initiative and I’d like to ask the Minister where the community consultation is and where is the credible needs survey? We do have housing needs in the North, but this continued approach by the Minister to throwing out plans and resources without sound planning and needs assessment…

Mrs. Groenewegen, your time for Member’s statement is expired.

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement, please.

The Member is seeking unanimous consent to conclude her statement. Are there any nays? There are no nays. You may conclude your statement, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, colleagues. Mr. Speaker, we cannot afford to continue to throw out resources in this shotgun approach without proper planning and consultation. We can’t wait for the findings of the Auditor General to tell us that we have a problem. We need a concise mandate. We need a competent Minister who can answer our questions because there’s too much at stake and there’s too many people in need to be running this Housing Corporation the way it’s being run now. I’ll have questions later on in question period. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause