Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Northwest Territories Housing Corporation a number of years ago introduced new programs such as CARE, HELP, STEP, to improve the delivery of assistance programs to homeowners in the Northwest Territories. There was a lot of praise, a lot of hope, and a lot of expectations from the residents of the Northwest Territories, especially homeowners, that they were going to see a real improvement in the programs. Yet today I still have a lot of my constituency coming forward and applying year after year and being refused on one excuse after another.
The aging infrastructure in our communities is some 30 or 40 years old, especially when you look at the old HAP units, the SHAG units. This infrastructure needs repairs. I know we put a lot of repairs into public housing infrastructure, but the intent of these programs was to find a way to assist homeowners by doing these important retrofits and making their homes energy efficient, bringing them up to existing regulations by way of health standards, electrical standards and safety standards. Yet we continue to see a gap in those people who have taken the time and own their homes.
A lot of our seniors, who we praise to stay in their own homes, shouldn’t be in an institution. Yet, Mr. Speaker, today we still have elders in our communities, and I’ll use an example in Fort McPherson of an elder who’s 96 years old, his wife is 95 years old. They live independently. They have a wood stove in their house. The old man is 96 and still packs wood into his own home. He requested a Monitor heater so he’d have a secondary heat system so he doesn’t have to pack wood into his home. He applied for a program about a year ago but he’s still waiting for an answer.
Mr. Speaker, I think it’s critical that this government does everything it can and if we have to revamp the program again, maybe do an assessment of what the program is to ensure that it is doing what we intended it to do, but, more importantly, are we reaching the people it was supposed to: the homeowners, the people that have made the investment, the people that remain in their home communities and have taken the risk, raising their families and staying in our communities? But again the affordability is there. So, Mr. Speaker, at the appropriate time I will be asking the Minister of Housing questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
