David Krutko

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also think this government has to do a better job of trying to work with local contractors to be able to deal with the repair aspect of housing. One of the problems we seem to have a problem with is the area of seniors’ homes. I am trying to work them into my statement here. I have three minutes.

Agreed. Moving on to executive, page 5-47, operations expenditure summary. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think that it’s time that this government did an assessment of this program and federal programs and see exactly who is benefiting from them and also who is losing out on these programs simply because they’re having some financial problems or they don’t have the capacity to do it, because I think from small communities that is one of the core problems we see in our communities, is they don’t have capacity, they don’t have the human resources, they can’t take advantage of federal programs. So as a government I’d like to request from the Minister if they can commit to...

Mr. Chairman, I would like to move a motion.

Minister of Housing.

Mr. Speaker, one of the main reasons is because the communities either had substantial deficits, which tells me that they are in trouble. I think that we have to find a way with working with those communities that are in trouble, finding a way that we can match funds with them or have funds. Right now what I see going on with the government is that they have surplus funds in certain projects that they are going to bring forward and they are going to subsidize certain projects which are presently on the books. For me, that is not fair. I would like to know, what is this government doing to work...

Minister of Housing.

Okay if we can move to page 5-43, corporate summary, operations expenditure summary. Again this is an information item.

I move that we report progress.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We had a great opportunity to improve the quality of services in the 33 communities of the Northwest Territories. I’m talking about the stimulus funds, infrastructure funds, and Building Canada Funds. Out of the information that’s been provided, only 14 projects have been approved. A lot of the communities were not able to take full advantage of this program, either because they do not have the capacity to take it on or they don’t have the resources to match the 50 percent that’s needed to match those funds.

I think it’s critical that a government that’s responsible to...