Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, the department does take into consideration seasonal access. Colville Lake is one community that I haven't been to yet and I want to go to. The units, though, in Colville Lake actually have a high condition rating.

So over the last ten years the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation has invested $2.6 million into capital in Colville Lake and $826,000 into home ownership and minor programs. In the last five years we built two public housing units in that community, and this current year we're building two affordable housing units in that community. Thank you, Mr...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Affordable housing is defined as market housing and the HELP program, which is a home ownership program. Just to add on, the "PH" is public housing. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the new Minister  I've taken over the Municipal and Community Affairs  I was aware that the audit was in the process, but it was only yesterday or the day before yesterday that the audit was shared with me. It is a confidential document and is not allowed to be distributed until it's finished. So, being that I've only just been presented with the audit by the auditors, and I'm not sure if it was yesterday or the day before but just within the last two days, I haven't really thought about all of the costing, in all honesty. I'm still looking at the recommendations and...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, that is not correct. Price is one factor that we look at. There are a variety of factors that we look at when we define who will be the successful bidder, such as the northern -- the business incentive policy process, whether they are locally, whether they are community. So there are a number of factors that we look at when we determine who will be the winning component. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. At this point, we haven't actually made a formalized plan on what we are going to be doing because I did make a commitment to listening to the community members, but we have talked in draft about different areas, mortgages, lease to own, a variety of different options for home ownership that we will be expanding on once the survey results are in. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As the commitment made to MLA Testart, we have committed that in future we will change the names from affordable housing for the RCMP units. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my left is Tom Williams, the president and CEO of the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation. On my right is Mr. Jim Martin. He's the vice president of finance and infrastructure services.

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...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The RFP are put out to accommodate all, so people can bid on the request for proposal either through stick-built, modular, or panel housing. We are open to all suggestions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.