Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I have questions for the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation along the same lines as summer students. Last year the NWT Housing Corporation hired seven students. To date how many students does the NWT Housing Corporation have on staff for the summer?
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Currently we have three. That’s not including what students the LHOs themselves might take on, which will probably bring the number a lot higher.
To the LHOs, did the Housing Corporation provide additional funding to LHOs for them to hire students at most if not all of the LHOs across the territory?
The LHOs identify how many students they would need and they’ve become very good at trying to access any pots of money that are out there to assist them with paying the wages for students. They’re able to make that determination and determine how many students they would need for the summer and they would find the financing.
The nature of the Housing Corporation is that they spend a lot of their funding on capital. Would the Housing Corporation look at hiring summer students as they’re doing capital projects throughout the summer?
The actual construction of the units or the capital projects that we’re putting up during the summer are usually contracted out. It would be up to the contractors to determine if they needed summer students. They would make that decision and there’s a lot of factors they would have to look at; obviously, the amount of training they have, safety, and all that. It would be up to the contractors to make that decision.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the capital projects that are not specifically under contract but other capital projects like maybe repairs or maintenance programs for homeowners and so on where there may be materials going to the communities and some sort of contribution, would the Minister look at something like that, making contributions to the communities using capital dollars so that the communities could have some summer students working on projects?
Again, if we are doing small capital projects that go out to the communities, even the smallest contracts are usually tendered out or sole sourced. It again would be up to the person doing the work as to whether they have or would need any summer students.
I do know that some of the LHOs will use summer students in some of the projects that they’re doing. That would be a determination that the LHO would make and, again, they would be able to finance that internally.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.
