Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am pleased to provide Members with an update on the Public Service Capacity Initiative, which Municipal and Community Affairs is jointly implementing with the Department of Human Resources, the NWT Association of Communities and the Local Government Administrators of the Northwest Territories.

The program was introduced in 2009 and has been developed around a series of actions that are aimed at enhancing community government public service capacity. Building public service capacity in both the GNWT and community governments is part of the Refocusing Government...

We try to distribute our resources equally and fairly across the Northwest Territories. We have some of our smaller communities that continue to get a good portion of the money. We’re always looking at ways to allocate resources to a lot of the communities that are in need. We find we have more applications in one community than another. We’re always looking at ways we can assist our homeowners to improve the condition of their units.

Obviously, being a private homeowner, they would be responsible for the remediation of their piles. However, the Housing Corporation does offer the CARE program where, if they’re eligible, they would qualify for home repairs and get the piling work done. As far as a program designed specifically for that, it doesn’t exist right now, but clients will have an opportunity through one of the home repair programs to get the work done to their units.

Those programs, as the Member said, were all discontinued. They were rolled into our basket of programs. As I said, the senior preventative maintenance is still geared towards seniors. Our CARE repair program, seniors would qualify for a lot more than they would under some of the old programs, from $20,000 to $90,000. The Member said they had to wait with everybody else and that’s usually what happens, but seniors are given a priority, as I pointed out to the Member.

Thank you. We have followed all the proper policies, all the proper processes in this case and we continue to do so. People may not agree with them, they might not like the decision that was made at the end and they continue to question the decision, but as far as following all the proper processes, that has been done. We followed them, the Norman Wells Land Corporation has followed them. There still is a lot of land that is available in the community, Commissioner’s land that’s available to the Town within their municipal boundaries and the Norman Wells Land Corporation want to acquire this...

The intent is to lease the property for the next three years; to purchase it after three years. Thank you,

Mr. Speaker, I can commit to doing that. I mean, the word is out there that they need to come and get reassessed. They see it as an opportunity to get their arrears straightened out if they believe that they’ve accumulated during the time it was over at ECE. But I can tell the Member and I can tell this House, actually, that we do have a couple of communities, the preliminary numbers we got when we first did the transfer over back in June, there was one community where, the highest community where, the highest community, I think, was 37 percent of the people still had to come in, which was our...

That would be a huge undertaking, given the amount of public housing tenants we have across the Northwest Territories. If we have to go on a community-by–community basis, for the most part we have a lot of folks that are in arrears. It would be a huge undertaking. I’ll see what kind of information I can pull together to share with the Members. If there are more examples of people who left the LHO owing a lot less than they originally thought, then I will give that information to the Members. It is a huge undertaking but I will commit to seeing what we’re able to provide.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Krutko already recognized him but I would like to recognize Charlie Furlong, who we didn’t know until now was responsible for this.

---Laughter

I sign off Commissioner’s lands transactions three or four times a week. We have properties all across the Northwest Territories where people are applying for Commissioner’s property. Now, is it the Member’s wish that I inform the Members, even though it’s not their particular riding, of all the transactions that take place or is there a size limit to it? If that’s his wish, then it’s something we can do. The price that was arrived at in this was in accordance with the land pricing policy of the Government of the Northwest Territories.