Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, earlier I made the statement on the mould in houses and elders moving out of their homes, so my questions are to the Minister of the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation. Elders have moved out about two months ago, so when will the remediation of elders' homes in Fort Providence be complete? Mahsi.
Masi. Minister of NWT Housing Corporation.
Mould remediation actually has to be done by qualified contractors. When we realized that there was some incidents of mould in the seniors' units we did put out a request for proposals. The people that were -- local agencies actually were at capacity and they didn't want to bid on it because they were already -- they didn't have the time to complete the work, so we did have to go south actually to get the specialization to deal with that.
Currently, though, what is happening now is three of the four units are currently ready for occupancy, so I believe the people are in the process of moving in. One senior, ironically, has requested an extension, they don't want to move back to their unit yet, because they're waiting for a bed to arrive that they've ordered, a special bed. So we have allowed them to actually not move back until they've received their bed that they've asked for. Then the last unit actually, the mould test that we did -- because we have to do a test before; after the remediation we do another test to make sure things are fine, the mould test results received indicated that the last unit does need to have further cleaning and testing on it, so that unit has now been cleaned. Again, we retested it on October 26th, and the results should be back within a week. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'd like to thank the Minister for her reply. The larger question is: what is the Housing Corporation's policy to address identified health risks in housing stock? These are homes that were built in the 70s. Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker. The policy within the Housing Corporation is that we have a limit on housing, so, when houses get too close to 50 years old, then we try not to do too much renovation. We do an assessment to see if it would be cheaper for us actually to build a new unit. When they get to the homes in the '70s, after I did the math on my fingers, actually will be hitting that time zone so that we look at: is it more cost effective to actually renovate, or is it more cost effective to actually demolish them and put up new units?
Mr. Speaker, the other question is: Why are certain contractors being used to complete remediation work in Fort Providence when it could be done by local people instead of bringing people from the south? Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, as I had stated in the first question from the Member, actually I did explain that mould remediation actually is a specialized procedure and so not everyone can actually perform that work. There are two companies in the Member's area that can do that work, but they were at capacity with other jobs and so they weren't interested in taking that on. Therefore, we had no choice other than to look elsewhere because our priority is to deal with the mould. It was a priority, so we took what was available to us. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Oral questions. Member for Deh Cho.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister reassure elders that they will be back in their homes by Christmastime? Mahsi.
Like I had said earlier, again, two of the elders actually have been returned to their units. One of them is waiting for a bed. I'm really hoping that that senior doesn't have to wait till Christmas to get a bed in there. Then the third one, we're just waiting for the final tests. I will do all within my power to make sure that these seniors have a home for Christmas.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
