Robert C. McLeod

We do have some percentage where adults are living with seniors. Obviously, if their household income is low, then most seniors would be paying minimum rent. I think on average we have about 90 percent of our seniors that are going to be paying minimum rent starting September 1st, so obviously it’s half of what we were initially going to charge, and then July 1st of next year we’ll go to full implementation. We do have some numbers; I don’t have them with me. I will provide them to committee. Ninety percent of our seniors would be paying minimum rent.

We already know what the community is looking for. Our officials will sit down and have a discussion with them. I’m always happy to meet with the leadership of any community, and if the need arises, then I would be pleased to meet with the leadership of Enterprise. Right now their officials and our officials are trying to iron out some of the details and we look forward to the results of their meetings.

We have communicated our desire to work with the community and they have communicated their desire to look at some of the options of establishing their own water treatment plant. The letter that we’ve received from them, they had laid out some options, and we would like to sit down with them and work on some of those options. If there needs to be some changes made to the way the community is funded, we would have to look at that also. They’ve made the initial communication that they have a desire to establish their own water treatment plant.

We do have some right now that we allocate to some communities that apply for it. It helps them with equipment mostly. We have to understand that there’s a huge liability issue in trying to provide emergency service in a lot of communities. If they’re not qualified, then that would put more residents at risk and put the communities or the individuals in a liability issue. So we have to explore all those options.

There is $200,000 now that is allocated to a number of communities. As the Member said, we only have three communities that have taken us up on it, but a lot of this is to help with...

Mr. Speaker, the intent is to have something by December of this year that we could possibly share. Obviously, there is a lot of work that needs to go into this to make sure we get a product that best serves all the people of the Northwest Territories. By December of this year, we are hoping to have something that we can have a discussion with committee about. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Originally this money was slated to sunset because we thought this would just be a temporary program until we can work out the details for a full-blown ambulance service once we did all the work, but it was committee’s wish that we reinstate this money. We are still a little ways off from coming forward with another plan on providing a wider scale of service.

As far as the application process goes, the communities know the drill. They have a pretty good idea of how they can access this money. However, I will commit to the Member that I will do some research into the...

We’ve done our homework and we know how this is going to affect seniors in the communities. As I said the other day, it will affect them to the tune of $35 a month starting September 1st, and full implementation on July 1st. One of the reasons we had the $1,000 exemption for seniors was the fact that we recognize a lot of them are on a fixed income. We have to be very careful that when they have adults in the home, again, I think we were talking today and there was some mention made of elder abuse. This sometimes can lead to elder abuse, where you have adults in the housing that are working...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my response to questions the other day, I did talk about the fact that there was some concern raised by Members and by the Seniors’ Society. We did take some of the recommendations. That’s why we decided that we’d implement it over a two-year period with the first being September 1st and the second being July 1st of next year. I did say the other day that this is something that needs to be done, and it’s a question of treating all people across the NWT equally like we all signed up to do in our Members Code of Conduct. That’s where we’re going with this. To pay $35...

That’s one of the options we would have to look at, as far as the timeline goes. We have to explore with the community the different options, as far as the types of water treatment plant. We haven’t had that discussion yet so we have to sit down with the community to discuss those options. I think at that time it would probably be best, or appropriate, then to come up with a timeline depending on which system they choose.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Enterprise has put in a desire to have their own water treatment plant. Our role now is to work with the community, and look at all of the options, and look at some of the different cost factors, and work with them to try to come up with the best deal possible for the community.