Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Ditto. I’d like to thank the Minister for her Member’s statement today.

Frankly, the Executive Council’s decision to rescind the 2007 policy on supplemental health benefits is a great step forward. Since this policy came into place and it was passed by the 15th Assembly in their dying days, it’s caused nothing but problems. It’s fundamentally flawed.

Sure, something needs to be done. We can’t argue that. We need to find a way to provide support to the low-income families who don’t have access to insurance or can’t get insurance. Clearly, that needs to be done. We’ve...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Following my colleagues, I, too, will be talking about housing.

Over the last year I have had an opportunity to get into a number of the communities. In pretty much every community we go to, one of the issues that comes up over and over again is housing, whether it is about affordability, accessibility or suitability.

There has been a lot of talk about arrears and vacant units and rent costs, as well as lack of flexibility within the Housing Corporation itself when it is delivering programs. To the Minister’s credit, I have heard some movement from the Minister. He is...

Does committee agree that that concludes our consideration of Table Document 66-16(5)?

We’ve concluded the detail so we’ll go back to the first page, which is page 3-10. The NWT Housing Corporation, information item, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $16.420 million.

Thank you Mr. Krutko. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Jacobson, if we could please get you to restate your question.

The next area I just have a few questions on is, I’m looking through your list and I’m seeing a lot more duplexes in here. I’ve been to a lot of communities over time and I guess I’m seeing more and more duplexes and more and more row housing type units over time. I think that’s a good direction for us to be going. I really feel that getting away from sort of single, stand-alone units over time will be better as far as maintenance costs, heating costs, if we can share some of the costs on a unit basis, construction costs, all of those types of things.

Does the Housing Corporation have a program...

Thank you Mr. Chair. I’ve gone through the list of items identified within the capital estimates, they’re information items. It looks like there are one, two, three, four, five new units under the HELP program for construction in ‘11-12, and I know there’s been a lot of talk about the number of vacancies and the Minister has made some commitments in the House about getting rid of the vacancies that exist in the Northwest Territories, but over my three years in the Legislative Assembly, I have been to a number of the communities and a lot of the communities that I go to, there are vacant HELP...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Your committee has been considering Tabled Document 66-16(5), Northwest Territories Capital Estimates 2011-2012, and would like to report progress with one motion being adopted, and that consideration of Tabled Document 66-16(5) is concluded and that the House concur with those estimates and that an appropriation bill to be based thereon be introduced without delay. And, Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I will keep it short. When might we, as Members, and when might the public start to see this research start and when might we see some sort of recommendations coming out of this review? Thank you.