Robert C. McLeod

Working with income support clients and trying to get people into units is obviously our top priority. In response to the Member’s question before, and I apologize for not giving a timeline, it’s actually effective April 1st that we will be leasing or subleasing private rental units. There is an expression for interest out there right now. We’re trying to deal with the affordability issue, especially in some of the market communities, through the Transitional Rent Supplement Program and other programs that we are trying to introduce. We are seeing this as a first step in trying to help address...

Thank you. As far as how long the process goes, I’m really not quite sure. We will work with the communities and try to expedite their desire to change their name if they wish to do that. So I will get the correct information and I will share it with the Member. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I can’t clarify that right now, but I would assume it’s 50 percent, 51 percent to approve a name change. But I will confirm that and relay that on to the Member. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I think that’s a point that needs to be clarified. I did see it in the media that $900,000 was unused, which was in my response to Member Bisaro the other day.

We had $1 million originally budgeted for this program. We have reduced that to about $900,000. We were doing some math the other day and it comes to about $75,000 a month that we are trying to assist transitional rent supplement clients and that works out to $900,000 per year. Our uptake right now is not where we want it to be and we need to make people more aware that the program is out there. We have had some ads in the paper. We have...

The consultation process that we’re going through right now will give a lot of people the opportunity to raise their concerns. I think the Member raised in his Member’s statement, there was a lot of good feedback from the people that had taken part in the consultations here, and I think he even mentioned some of the areas outside of the focus areas. So we use this consultation, and it’s been a great opportunity for folks out there to let us know their feelings as we continue to develop our policy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a few more communities that we need to visit, to do our consultations. Once we do that we’ll work on putting together a bit of a draft consultation and the overall policy is expected to be fully completed in mid-2016. Thank you.

Thank you. Again, that would be part of the feedback from the consultation, but our initial plan is if we’re going forward in letting any leases out there, a ballot draw we’ve heard is the fairest way to do that. We respect that and we would take that into consideration, but our plan now is if any lands were to be disposed of I think the ballot draw would be the fairest process. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. The focus area in and around the capital here is our highest usage and the most demanded for the recreational areas in and around the focus area that we have around the capital.

So we’ve heard some concerns, such as the Member raised there. As far as all of the NWT, the demand out there is not as great as it is here within the focus area. But I’ll have a discussion with the officials and we’ll see if there’s any movement that we can make because we have heard the concerns from not only the Member but a few of the constituents from Yellowknife. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Lands’ inspection services are essential for responsible and sustainable development in the NWT. Their success hinges on building the capacity of the inspections program through training and professional development planning. Inspections services help companies comply with relevant legislation and meet the specific terms and conditions set out in authorizations issued by the department and NWT land and water boards.

In establishing the Department of Lands, a key consideration was a made-in-the-NWT approach to the inspections process, one that would...

I don’t think we had a timeline on this. It was a program to help those that are living in market communities that were dealing with an affordability issue. We had originally, I think, budgeted just over $1 million. We’re down to about $900,000 now. I don’t believe we had put a timeline on this. Again, it will be part of the whole evaluation process to see how well the program is working and we’ll take that information as we move forward. Thank you.