Kevin O'Reilly

I do appreciate the response from the Minister, and I did give him a headsup because I’ve been requested to sort of follow-up on this matter by the commission. The commission, itself has undertaken efforts to persuade federal officials, including the Heritage Canada Minister, to provide additional funds for the expansion of Ecole Allain St-Cyr, but the response from the federal Minister was that CSFT and all the commissions scolaires need to go back to GNWT and get them to make the request for additional funding. We’re sort of running around here. I understand from the Minister that he’s...

Thanks, Mr. Chair, I’ll try to keep this short and I don’t want to prolong the discussion. I don’t know what Yukon and Nunavut are doing in terms of preparing a plan or a proposal for the federal government…

I’m hoping I can get the Minister’s attention.

Masi, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize Yvonne Quick, who’s a constituent in the gallery. I can’t quite see her but she’s done a lot of very important work in the development of the tourism industry here in the Northwest Territories. I also want to recognize Sam Gargan. I had the privilege of working with Sam when he was a regular MLA on a private Member’s bill to introduce access to information legislation in the Northwest Territories. Thanks, Sam.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. that’s good to hear, because then there will be a consistent way of costing out the work, and the Housing Corp knows how to cost out housing projects, so they will be applying some sort of consistent methodology presumably, and that stuff can be rolled up. Then would we be in a position to make some predictions of how that will address core needs across the Northwest Territories? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. As I understand it then, in this work that’s going to be done as early as this summer, there will be questions around suitability, adequacy, and affordability. I’m just wondering, I fully understand the need to have communitybased housing plans, but if that information is not rolled up in some way at a territorial level, how can there be a plan, a budget to actually do the work to get our housing out of core need, and to roll that up does require some level of consistency in terms of soliciting information. I’m not suggesting that one size is going to fit all in terms of the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the Minister for helping me to understand the difference between these two tools that the Housing Corp is going to be using. I’m still trying to understand how the current surveys that are going to be sent out, is there going to be questions around costs to bring housing stock up to or out of core need? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that commitment, and I’ll look forward to seeing that report. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate the commitment from the Minister. I’m just trying to figure out the timing of this. Is the Housing Corporation going to look at some way of sharing the cost savings with its tenants through energy conservation? Is that going to happen this year or next year or at some future point? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I have to confess that before I was elected I really didn’t pay a lot of attention to the housing situation here in the Northwest Territories, but I was certainly shocked when I did look into the 2014 Housing Needs Survey. You know, the sort of statistics in here, non-market communities, 44.3 per cent of our housing has problems. Thirty-two-point-three per cent of non-market communities have housing in core need. That’s a third of the housing in non-market communities. People should let that sink in for a minute. Now, when we talk about housing, people need to understand, I...

I appreciate the response from the Minister, and I’ll keep pushing him to directly contact the federal Minister of Heritage, but the sad fact is, Mr. Speaker, that students are actually leaving Ecole Allain St-Cyr, and students are leaving, particularly in high school, to go to other schools, and that’s because we’ve been waiting years for equitable and adequate facilities, such as a gymnasium. News that planning is underway for a new gym and more classrooms, that a request for proposals will soon be led for the expansion of Ecole Allain St-Cyr would give these students some hope. Can the...