Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to present the 2014-15 Main Estimates for the NWT Housing Corporation. The main estimates propose a budget of $141.730 million, an increase of 25.7 percent from the 2013-14 Main Estimates. The budget includes a contribution of $83.482 million from the GNWT for 2014-15.

As Members are aware, one of the five priorities identified by the 17th Legislative Assembly is to address housing needs. There are significant differences in housing between our market and non-market communities and there are needs along the entire housing continuum, from homelessness to...

Size of unit, yes. They would know, yes, I suppose, if they’ve got four or five kids under their care, but I’ll look into that and see if the Member has any specific cases that he may want to share with me that brought this question about, then I’d be pleased to hear them. But as far as the actual assessment of rent itself, it has no bearing.

The transitional housing, we’ve had some success with this program and I think it’s helping people. The Member is talking about I think going from transitional housing. I’ll have Mr. Stewart add on to that in a minute.

The hot water tanks, I can’t remember...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments on the work that the Housing Corporation has done. As I said on a number of cases, we have come up with a lot of initiatives and then we task our officials with doing all the work and they do a very good job.

The public housing stock, we are placing I think 39. You notice, when we do talk about our public housing stock, we always talk about replacement. We are not adding any new public housing on. If we put 39 in, we will more than likely be taking 39 out, some of our older units because we do have a lot of old units out there. Part of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank the Member for the concerns that she’s raised. When she talks about the capacity, I believe the Housing Corporation has demonstrated that they do have the capacity, and I use the example of all the money we got for the Affordable Housing Initiative a few years ago, and we had to get all those projects on the ground. I think it was quite a task for a couple years and we managed to get all the units on the ground. I think we’re one of the only jurisdictions in the country that was able to use all the money and match all the money. We had to deal with the problem of...

We have offered up a meeting to the leadership of the Hay River Reserve. That has been a challenge. Almost from the time of the Minister previous to me, that has been a bit of a challenge. Part of it is because of the fact that it’s on reserve land. If there were eligible clients there and they were able to get I think it’s a band council resolution, a BCR, to have tenure to the land, then they would be able to have access to those units.

We’ve tried everything, we’ve tried selling it to the band. We’ve had many discussions on this particular file and we’d really like to see it come to a...

We’ll work with the district office and the local housing organizations to identify any units that could be used in the community. Our plan is to send a reference with a terms of reference to all communities that might want to access this program. Then we do have a homelessness coordinator who is quite interested in trying to get out into the communities and work with communities on proposals and things along those lines.

Once the budget has gone through and we have approval of the Legislative Assembly, we’ll send letters out to communities and gauge interest. I see we will probably have some...

There were a lot of programs that were specifically designed for seniors, but we’ve rolled all those into the programs that we offer now. If you look at the Preventive Maintenance Program that the Member was referring to, a good portion of those clients are seniors and our program officers working with the government service officers in the communities, we try to get to as many seniors as possible. If they applied the year before and we know that they are still an eligible client, then we’ll see what we can do to try to assist them in getting preventative maintenance done.

As well, I could...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As part of the Member’s first question on public housing purchase, that is going to be part of the PATH program now providing assistance to homeownership, so they’ll be able to access that program to purchase a public housing unit. We’re actually thinking of approaching some of the public housing clients that have been there and been good tenants and keep the rent up to date for a long time. We’re actually considering approaching them to see if they would be interested. So, the work is ongoing in that.

The operating deficits, we do have a number of communities that are...

I do, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We appreciate the Member’s comments on the work that the NWT Housing Corporation is doing and we look forward to getting this project in Aklavik done. We are pleased that the community had chosen the same spot as the previous one, and having been there just recently, I see that one is down. I think we’re doing the work on the tender documents now and we’re hoping to have those out and have the contract awarded.

You talk about local employment in some of the smaller communities. A lot of the M and I work that the community does is an opportunity for employment, as far as...