Michael McLeod

Mr. Chairman, we will ask Mr. Anderson, who has been dealing with this issue, to respond.

Mr. Chairman, the Market Housing Program was set up so that we could buy a number of mobile units, waive the BIP policy on it and put them in the communities where there was a demand and have them available for operation by the LHOs and/or for sale. That was the design of it. I think we bought 42 units overall over a couple of years and then didn’t carry it out any longer. The housing for staff is more towards trying to provide incentive to communities, development corporations and businesses in the communities, band councils or municipal councils to invest into providing units for people that...

Mr. Chairman, we’ll have Mr. Anderson explain the details of the $39 million.

Thank you. To demonstrate, I am willing to live with the will of this House. I was considering abstaining but…

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Mr. Chairman, I think the time has come that we have to introduce new technology, whether it is BlackBerries or laptops. I think we should try it out and really monitor how well it works. If it is something that we need to introduce for the long term, then we will do that. We need to make sure that we police it well. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, that has been looked at in various manners including with the Auditor General, so we totally agree that the finance recommendation is correct.

Mr. Chairman, no, it doesn’t. There is still $60 million earmarked for this coming year that is carried over.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We had anticipated that we would be part of the process for next year, so that is what we are working towards.

Mr. Chairman, most of the Members’ communities exceed 90 percent, some are close to 100 percent. We have one community that is having some challenges and we will be working with them.

Mr. Speaker, we did have a sit down meeting with the Gwich’in leadership and one of the chiefs did raise some concern with a staff position and comments made. We will look into the situation and we will take the advice of the Member and provide the guidelines to all our staff. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I think as this is my second go-round as Housing Corporation Minister and I have raised it every year with the finance people of our government. The response is that we are legally obligated to recognize it in our books as a debt and we don’t have a lot of room to change that.