Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will speak to the first part of the Member’s comments and then I am going to turn it over to Mr. Stewart to speak about this strategy that they use to come up with the allocation.

Again, we appreciate the Member’s comment on the direction this department has been going and his applause for this department. Part of the reason that we’re able to do a lot of the initiatives that we have is because of our relationship with committee. We try to keep them up to date on a lot of the initiatives that we are bringing forward; we seek their support and their input. I think it goes...

Mr. Speaker, the Department of Lands is responsible for managing and administering Territorial Lands and Commissioner’s Land. Territorial Lands are public lands formerly administered by the federal government and devolved to the Government of the Northwest Territories on April 1, 2014. Commissioner’s Land is public land already under the GNWT’s jurisdiction and formerly administered by the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs. Prior to April 1st of this year, the GNWT was only responsible for 0.02 percent of the land mass, or roughly 2,700 square kilometres. Post-devolution we are now...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will take it as a comment, and of course, we’ll be updating the Member on any changes that might be happening in his riding. But we’ll take it as a comment.

Thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars is what those packages cost, I’ve seen the ad. We’re open to just about anything as long as they meet our standards, and you know, we’ll consider just about any option that’s out there. I think, if anything, the corporation has proven in the last little while that they’re fairly flexible and everything’s not written in stone as it was in the past. So, we’re fairly flexible and we want to work with homeowners. Again, there are options for them to purchase existing homes if they’re approved for our homeownership program. So we want to work with them. We...

Thank you. I’m assuming the Member is speaking to all units across the Northwest Territories that were converted to public housing. If he is, we don’t have those numbers with us right now, but we can get those numbers and provide it to the Member in committee. I will hand it over to Mr. Stewart to speak of six units I believe we have in Detah/Ndilo that we’re planning on converting to public housing.

I believe that was a HELP unit. I don’t think it was a public housing unit. So we’ll have to go in there and if it’s one of our units, we’ll have to take the steps we need to retrofit the unit. I’ll follow up on that and share the information I gather with the Member.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We believe that the private sector can play a role in the supply of housing in the Northwest Territories. Through some of our third-party programs, I think we do work with private developers. In some of the communities we offer incentives for private developers to provide housing for professionals in their community.

The Disneyland, our plan is to have it vacant for now and then we’ll look at what different options we might have for that particular piece of property.

On the seniors that are selling their own homes, the Member makes a fair comment that there’s a gap between...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We try to ensure that all our communities are adequately housed. I think if you look in the business plans that we’re debating today, you’ll see for 2015-16, we’ve got two replacement public housing units for Aklavik as well as we have some major M and I’s. Part of the reason for the waiting list in the community – and I’m not sure about the exact waiting list in Aklavik, I think it’s about 22 people who are on the waiting list – we recognize that the demand is out there for more multiplex units and more units for singles. That’s the direction I think we’re starting to go...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments about the work that the NWT Housing Corporation is doing and some of the direction that we are learning. The Member is correct; I have replied to a number of these issues, but there is a couple that I won’t touch on again.

CMHC funding does decline to zero in 2038. I think this year alone our net loss on that was $1.2 million, I believe, or $768,000. It is one of the two numbers. I think all of the deputies in the country have a meeting with the new president of the CMHC in early November. We are co-chairing the meeting. We are actually...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do.