Michael McLeod

I believe the question is if we have our staff go door to door to see if they’ve all applied. No, we don’t do that.

Yes, Mr. Chairman. We would work with the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs to address the issue to look at providing an emergency type of situation that would allow us to get into the community. If it is feasible, it would be forced to fly the fuel in, or if it is a community that is on the ice or along the river system that provide enough short-term assistance until the product was able to get there in the summer. But there is a committee, a working group that is made up from different departments that would look at each situation. It is something that is being monitored.

Mr. Chairman, we undertook an assessment study approximately a year and a half ago on all the airports to determine if the links were appropriate and the conditions. In the case of Lutselk’e, the runway is in good condition and it’s adequate to meet the needs of that community.

We’ll have that in all the detail.

I will have Mr. Anderson, who has a better grasp on the history on this, to explain why it is. Mr. Chairman, this amount here is the amount that we are repaying on our debt. The federal government also puts in $9 million that flows through us to repay the debt. Right now, as of April 1st, our debt will be at $66 million. Mr. Anderson would be pleased to talk about the history.

Mr. Chairman, it is a concern and it is on our agenda to sit down with the NWT Association of Communities and also to talk to MACA about looking at some solutions. Mr. Chairman, we know why the communities are doing it; they use the money to offset their costs, but I think the real reason is they know we get a subsidy or have been getting a subsidy from the federal government that they are also tapping into in a roundabout way.

Mr. Chairman, it would be really nice to get to zero, but I don’t think that would ever happen. The national average is actually 12 percent and that’s the goal that we are striving towards. We have 2,200 families right now in core need across the Territories. That’s the rating we use. We look at and analyze people in the communities in terms of the different measurements for suitability, overcrowding, things of that nature.

Mr. Chairman, that is our goal, to reduce the need in all the different areas. The numbers the Member is referring to, the 76 percent and the core need rating was from four years ago. We have, since then, put a lot of units on the ground in the last three years. We put close to 500 units in the communities. We expect the 2009 core need rating to be significantly different. We still will set our budgets according to the core need based on unit costs and the different construction needs in the area.

Mr. Chairman, we already do some of these projects in that fashion. We would be open to that, providing all of the ingredients or all the components of doing the contract in that fashion are there.

That is probably a question better posed to the Department of Human Resources. The areas that are of concern under the collective bargaining are the issues of potential or what could be viewed as potential subsidy and the other issue is availability of units once we enter a program that may be required to be provided for everyone. So those are issues that need to be looked at and understood properly before we move forward.