Robert C. McLeod

In a lot of the market communities, a lot of these are driven by what the actual owners of these gas stations pay for the product that they bring in. I’m sure if they bring product in at a lower price, then that price will also be reflected at the pump. I’ve seen it firsthand where our supplier got some gasoline a little cheaper and our prices actually had gone down by a few cents. My understanding is the prices here in the capital have been fairly level for the last 18 months.

---Interjection

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As we put those six into stock, we have to take six out and they’re replaced. So they’ll replace six older units because we just don’t have the funds from CMHC, again, to deal with that. There’s a lot of CMHC numbers that were tied to particular pieces of infrastructure. So we put six in and we take six out. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments about the Housing Corp has done quite well. We always look for some positive feedback and we appreciate that.

As far as the empty units in Fort Good Hope, we have had some preliminary discussions with the community and private individuals on those units. The one thing we want to make sure of is that we do our assessments to make sure they’re free from any hazardous type of material before we put them out, and when we do put them out, our preference would be to go to a full public process where everybody has an opportunity to access these...

We have no new public housing or no public housing replacement units for Detah/Ndilo in this fiscal year. As far as the long-term plan, I would have to see what our long-term plan is.

Again, we have the major retrofits that we’re planning on doing there. As far as the long-term plan, again, we’re using the recently completed Community Needs Survey to help us to determine our next allocation of capital projects, and as soon as we have that, then we will share that with committee, obviously, and we’ll have an opportunity to have a discussion on the Community Needs Survey in our briefing with...

We appreciate the Member’s comments before about noticing a lot of the newer units going up in the communities. We appreciate that and it’s a good idea for some of the work that we’re trying to do in addressing some of the issues with housing.

The solar panels, we’re looking forward to seeing how they work. Biomass is not one that is slated for these particular projects, but it is something that we are exploring when we are putting up our other infrastructure. We’ll be looking at that. Of course, with the declining CMHC funding, we’ll have to find ways to try and cut back on our expenses and...

Oh, right. The situation in Hay River with the panels. So, Mr. Chair, I will turn it over to Mr. Stewart.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments on the work that the NWT Housing Corporation is doing. I heard her say she is pleased with the work we are doing. We appreciate that. Again, we work with the committee very closely.

The Member was talking about singles units. It is a challenge and that’s a direction that we are going to have to go, is give more towards singles. In some of the larger communities, especially the market communities, if we were to come and put 20 or 30 units on the ground, I think we would hear from the business community, and we don’t want to do that.

One of...

Thank you. As long as I’ve been Minister of MACA we’ve had these questions, and I think one of the reasons that we had originally said at the time was our lack of telecommunication infrastructure across the Northwest Territories. I think we’ve seen in the last four or five years that has improved dramatically where you’re getting service in a lot of the small communities. One of the things we want to make sure of before we implement, and it could be a partial, I mean, that’s one of the options they’re looking at to implementation, we want to be sure that all our communities have the capability...

Mr. Chair, not at the present time. He is spending a lot of his time dealing with the deficit and trying to find ways to alleviate some of the pressures. As things settle down a bit, then we can have a discussion with him as to getting someone in there and working with the community to start the plans for a new facility.