Robert C. McLeod

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Speaker, the Department of Lands has made significant progress since taking over the management of public land in the Northwest Territories as part of devolution last April.

Much of the department’s progress to date has been due to the hard work of its employees. While about 75 percent of our positions were filled by existing federal and GNWT staff when devolution came into effect, the remainder of the department’s positions had to be staffed.

Mr. Speaker, April 1st was just the beginning. Since its creation, the Department of Lands is setting priorities, planning and managing new issues as...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We will provide a list of… I couldn’t answer offhand if we have any vacant units in the communities, but we can look that up and provide that information. The rents are basically in line with the public housing rents. We try to calculate it along the same line. For example, the monthly rent for a two-bedroom unit would be $1,250 in Trout Lake and $1,410 in Ulukhaktok.

Mr. Chair, 36 is year two of our goal of 100 over three years in the $21 million investment. We have locations picked for all of the units this year and the ones that we did last year, and I’d be pleased to provide that information to committee so they’ll know the whereabouts of all the market rental units. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is correct; the 40 are replacement public housing units and the 36 market housing are new units. Thank you.

The quick answer is no, we’re not looking at that particular type of program. It was a very successful program when it ran. We were able to get many people into homeownership units and some of them are still in there. Many of these units, through some of our other repair programs we’ve actually paid for all of the renovations to these units. I think at the time it was the right program at the right time and it did, I think, transition a lot of people out of public housing into their own homes. Off hand, I can’t think of how many we did across the Northwest Territories, these HAP units. There...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To my right I have Mr. David Stewart, president of the NWT Housing Corporation, to my left is Mr. Jeff Anderson, vice-president of finance and infrastructure of the NWT Housing Corporation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would have to get the update on that and provide it to the Member. I don’t have it with me right now, so I’ll take the Member’s question as notice. Thank you.

---Question taken as notice

The $1.6 million is money that we’ve received from ECE through their Income Support program. They supported many people in public housing or income support clients into housing units. We’ve taken over the administration of that program, so we’re actually looking at 75 units possibly leasing and, in turn, give those units to former clients who were formerly on income support to try to transition back into public housing. So it’s not the construction of 75 new units. I believe in many communities there are families supported through this particular program. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I thought I did answer the question. Yes, we will look at it for every community.