Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I can’t help but make my perennial comment here. This commitment, obviously, I think to date we’ve spent somewhere in the order of $9 million looking after our tank farms and there are new federal regulations requiring additional monitoring equipment and fairly expensive equipment and so on. Of course, we have these tank farms in many of our communities. Again, I hope that this is brought into the accounting equation when we consider other energy infrastructure; for example, the Biomass Strategy implementation, should we get around to that when talking about what we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Once again, I appreciate those comments. I suppose the last question, really, is, is there a time frame -- given that we’re slightly over halfway through our term here, and I’d like to see some good progress here, I know many of us would and it sounds like the Deputy Premier as well -- that we can expect for this initiative to come from Cabinet or does he see Social Programs leading that effort? Thank you.

Thank you for the comments, Deputy Premier. I think certainly those comments reflect where many of us are. Given that a well thought out and implemented strategy with ongoing evaluation is demonstrably more effective than independent reactive policies, such as we put in place now -- and we have put a lot in place, I’m the first to admit that -- what action is this government willing to take to now move to the next level of developing a comprehensive strategic plan to tackle the issue? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s my great pleasure to welcome people belonging to the Goyatiko Language Society in Dettah. First, I’d like to recognize Mary Rose Sundberg, instructor, and her students: Lena Drygeese, Francis Betsina, Nora Crookedhand, Stella Martin, Andrew Crapeau and Margaret Baillargeon. Welcome to the House. Maybe a hand for those people, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

Also, Mr. Speaker, we had students and teachers of Grade 6 Weledeh School. It was great to have them in the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I see a proportion of the projects proposed here have been approved by Canada. I am wondering if more have been approved since I was last updated on that. Also, perhaps just for some perspective, have projects just generally been approved in the past? We’ve got a little bit of experience now on this. I am wondering if most of our projects or all of our projects in the past have eventually been approved by Canada. Thank you.

Of course, there’s probably nothing I could do to prevent the Minister from sticking to his guns. It’s just, you know, a very irresponsible position to take, decision to make.

The best example I can think of is the youth centres, for example, that we are training our youth to have absolutely no respect for the natural world and their future when we build youth centres that you can see daylight under the doors, and don’t have porches and some of the very basic principles of energy conservation, not to mention the high costs associated with that and the lack of ability to pursue other options...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanted to mention again the issue of building codes and our lack of requiring such codes when we transfer this funding to communities. It’s perhaps a sensitive situation in a way, but we have these high standards for ourselves and with that we enjoy the returns and the benefits that that brings. Our operational costs are going down, we’re now saving millions of dollars per year and yet we’re not providing our communities with that same opportunity by requiring that level of building standard.

Now, I recognize that we are, in the longer term, requiring communities to come...

I appreciate those comments from the Minister. I didn’t want to ignore completely, either, the efforts we are making in another division here, asset management, which we approved, but during which we’re making significant investments with very reasonable payback times, and I think those are good investments. Those are showing the payback times and whatnot. I think we had some 40 projects in that area. I’m very supportive of getting that work done. There’s at least another 400 of those that we could all come up with, should the resources permit. So I’m very supportive of that approach. Thank...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation.

In regard to vacant public housing units in the NWT:

What is the vacancy rate of housing units by community?

What is the range and average period of vacancy for units?

Are vacant units heated or are they winterized and not heated until needed?