Bill Braden

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering why this particular Minister doesn’t get it, either. The committees and Members on this side are not the constituents or the clients of the Housing Corporation. There are some 23 local housing organizations administering 2,344 subsidized rental housing units. This is the constituency that the corporation should be talking with. We hear that Cabinet has to sign off on a mandate for the Housing Corporation before anybody else has the chance to talk about it. How can it be that this corporation has ignored the people who are really involved, and the real customers, in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for Mr. Krutko, Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation. Mr. Speaker, my colleague, the Member for Hay River South, delivered a rich inventory of issues that concern us about the corporation and the way it manages its mandate. Over time, they will, I am sure, get attention. The area I would like to focus on is one of governance, Mr. Speaker, and the mandate under which the Housing Corporation conducts the programs and the budgets that are before us. I wanted to ask the Minister with regard to the review of the Housing...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. One of the key messages included in the pre-budget consultation report that your committee had the pleasure of introducing yesterday was about the importance of early childhood development programs. We all know that this is an upfront investment. When we make an investment in our children, it certainly pays off down the road.

A number of organizations, including the NWT Status of Women Council and Alternatives North, made note of the need for this government to continue to lobby the federal government for a fair allocation of childcare dollars to the NWT. Mr. Speaker, as...

Okay. Can the Minister or his staff tell us, has this been an issue in the past? Have we had residents complain to us that they haven't had an opportunity to be heard, and that maybe due process was maybe a little rough on them? I am just trying to gauge, is this something that we should pursue, or is this something that is really inconsequential? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we know a lot more about this project today than we did coming into question period. The Minister has told us that a lot of this is contingent on the project going ahead, but still there are certain commitments that are to be expected. This is a big project and a very innovative one. We may have to change the way we do some of our business. Are we going to have to make some upfront commitments, potentially years in advance of delivery of these units, in order to live up to our end of this hypothetical deal here? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are getting a bit more information. Now we know that we have about 1,400 units with some $121 million potentially from the GNWT, and $90 million from the Government of Canada, plus land development costs. So that gives us some idea of the scale and the scope. Mr. Speaker, as the Minister has pointed out, the pipeline is not yet a given, as much as we all hope that it will be. What we know now is that things are a little on the hypothetical side. When could we anticipate that these units would begin to be made available and put on site? What is the time frame...

Okay, so the Minister doesn’t have information for us or can’t go back to really what the original objective was and say that it has been satisfied; the program has changed to accommodate other people. Mr. Speaker, one part of this program was also that the units will not be subsidized and the Housing Corporation has been directed -- I’m reading from the business plan of last year -- to ensure a lease rate that is based on a full cost recovery basis. Can the Minister assure the House that the cost of renting and the sale of some of these units have indeed been at full cost recovery? Thank...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to focus on the original objective of this, which was to get employees into units that were appropriate for them and affordable. The uptake on this in the first year was not all that great. I wanted to ask the Minister, of the 42 units that are either on site or in the process of being finalized, how may of them are being occupied by those essential workers, the initial target group of tenants? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

So, Mr. Speaker, what I guess we can anticipate here is another piece of paper that Cabinet is going to approve -- I heard the word “approve” -- then it’s going to be passed over here for rubberstamping, I guess. To what degree is Cabinet going to control the overall review and acceptance of the Housing Corporation’s new mandate, or is this just another rubberstamp exercise? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we’ve all been aware for some time now, in fact in the business plans that we looked at in the budget session earlier this year, that this review was underway. I haven’t heard very much about it. Housing is one of the most essential parts of our infrastructure here in the NWT. For the Housing Corporation to undertake a fundamental review of its mandate, I would like to think that they might have been talking to a few people. I haven’t heard very much about it though. So what kinds of consultations and stakeholder groups have been contacted about this mandate, and to what extent...