Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in follow-up to my Member's statement, I have a few questions for the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister provide a status update on the construction and delivery of modular units throughout the Northwest Territories communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, the delivery of modular units throughout the whole Northwest Territories, that has kind of kicked me off. I am going to try to answer this. My belief is that we had 19 constructed, to be constructed with Concept Energy, and one to be constructed with the Energy Wall here, in Yellowknife. So, we have eight that are partially built with Concept, and we have one completed with Energy Wall. We have four that are delivered to communities at this point, we will still need some work on, so at this point we are still short some, but I cannot do the math at this point.
Mr. Speaker, can the Minister describe the comparison in costs and anticipated lifespan for modular units versus stick-built homes?
The lifespan of all of our units within the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation is about 40 years, so whether they are a modular unit or a stick-built unit, we do try to provide repairs and upgrades to make sure that they can last as long as they can. Some units of course suffer higher damage through a variety of reasons and so they do not make the lifespan of 40 years, but we do try to make sure that all units are repaired or upkept to meet that 40-year lifespan.
Mr. Speaker, increasing employment in our small communities is a priority for this government. It is a big item in our mandate, and the Housing Corporation has a role to play. How is the corporation planning its delivery of programs and services to create jobs and opportunities for residents, for instance in construction and maintenance?
The Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, it was kind of interesting when I started this position. My understanding as the Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation was that I was to put houses on the ground. It was a short time later that I realized that actually a large percentage of the Housing Corporation's money does go to providing employment in communities. Not only do we provide jobs for maintaining and building units. We have 23 local housing organizations in communities that we provide support for, too, so a huge amount of our money is actually going towards employing people in the Northwest Territories. Perhaps a question that I am going to put out there that I would have liked to have heard from the MLA is that are we going to continue with the houses in the North, the modular units. I will share right now, today, that we had some difficulty, actually, with barging the modular units into communities. So we learned from our mistakes, so what I have given direction is that, for communities that we have to barge into, we are going to try not to do modular units because of the barging difficulties.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Mackenzie Delta.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that is good news, but, you know, the Minister states that they are putting a lot of employment into the communities, but just to set the record straight, one building stick-built homes we have in the neighbourhood of five to six people working on one unit, whereas putting these modular homes into our communities, seeing first-hand when they brought the ones to Tsiigehtchic, we had probably two people who worked for one day to bring these units up the hill. Mr. Speaker, you do the math. The Minister may have a little trouble with this, but, you know, five to six months of employment for five people is no comparison to two days for most likely the same operator, as well, Mr. Speaker. So that is good news because they are barging into Tsiigehtchic, Fort McPherson, and Aklavik, so I am hoping that in the future we are doing stick-built homes. Will the Minister please confirm that?
It is important to note that the modular units that are currently being delivered are built within the Northwest Territories, and my ambition is to have northern-built homes for northern people, so that is my priority, and I have still stuck to it. As stated in my previous answer, communities that have barges, we are looking at a different model of building because of the difficulty getting modular units onto barges. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
