Robert C. McLeod

We would like to think all the homeless shelters, emergency shelters, transition homes would be of the highest standards. As far as standards go, I will follow up and see where we are with that, but I would expect that all of our units, and I know the ones that I’ve been to, have very high standards. I’ll follow up on the Member’s request and I’ll communicate that to the Member and Members.

As far as the infrastructure goes, I think we’ve made it well known that we’ve made some contributions to some organizations to help with the infrastructure, and we do that throughout the Northwest Territories. I think one of the things we do quite well is make some contributions to some of the infrastructure that they’d be running.

As far as the programs go, that’s under a different department. But 2014-15, we will be having discussions on the business planning process, I think, come December, and there will be an opportunity there for Members to have some input into that. I believe for the...

There are many different reasons why we have these situations in some of the communities with the couch surfing and the other issues that they do have. I think one of the things that I’ve seen during my time as the Minister is a lot of people were being evicted because of arrears and that, but I have to admit that across the Northwest Territories the numbers of people that are honouring their commitments has gone up by quite a bit and we’re very encouraged by that, and we look forward to the next few years where we see less and less evictions because people are honouring their commitments.

As...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have started work on the new housing needs survey and we’re anticipating early 2014 to start the survey.

I’m not sure if the Member is talking about the pilot projects that we’re trying from each community or for four communities as far as helping with homelessness goes. I know on the seniors side of it we have about 300 units that are in our public housing portfolio that are specifically earmarked for seniors and we try to keep seniors in their homes as long as possible. As well, are the programs that we have for seniors that do own their own homes? We have a Preventative Maintenance Program that we’re able to assist them in working with Health and Social Services on the home care part of it...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our homelessness coordinator actually started in August of this year, and she has had the opportunity to meet with some folks here in Yellowknife and in Nahendeh, I believe, and it’s her intent to try and go across the Northwest Territories to meet with all the stakeholders and get their input on some of the programs they’re running and some of the improvements that could be made. As far as an overall report, this will be part of the process. I will commit to try to see where we’re at with that and get some information to the Members as quickly as possible.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize a former colleague and good friend, Floyd Roland, former Premier. With Floyd is Angela Young, who has worked as an educator in Inuvik for the past 12 years. I’d also like to recognize former colleague Mr. Henry Zoe. Welcome to the House. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I will follow up on the status of our condition ratings. I do know that usually by fall all the condition ratings are done and any potential maintenance issues in the units are identified.

Again, dealing with the mold issue, I think through the investment we’ve made in the last number of years into the improvement of our public housing units, we’ve been able to see a lot of those issues come down. There are a number of factors. We have a website where the public can access, and for those that don’t have a computer, I’m sure our LHOs will do some education on their part. It is a...

Mr. Speaker, our maintenance staff in all of the small communities, they do condition ratings every year where they go from unit to unit and look at some of the work that needs to be done in there. They kind of use those condition ratings as a basis for some of the major improvement programs that we have through the Public Housing Program in our small communities. We do go through the units every year and identify all the potential maintenance issues, and then our staff in the small communities will then start generating work orders and remediate a lot of the issues that they find in the units...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This was an issue that we had a discussion with the NWT Teachers’ Association about, and we had committed to them that we were going to do some work and see what we could do to provide houses in some of the communities where they face the most challenges, one of the communities being actually in the Member’s riding.

We have approximately 102 units right now that we are renting out. I believe 41 of those are taken up by teachers. We’ve converted many of our vacant units into units that could be available to teachers, and we are planning, in the future, to work in each...