Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I would.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m joined today by, to my right, Mr. Jeff Polakoff, president and CEO of the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, and to my left I have Mr. Jeff Anderson, vice-president of finance with the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation.

Mr. Chair, we’ve given people an opportunity to enter into a mortgage repayment plan and we have had fairly good uptake. We have 139 who have chosen one of the options, the mortgage payment plan. We’ve had some that have refinanced through the bank. We have some that have refinanced through the NWT Housing Corporation. We have some that have entered into repayment plans. We’re quite confident and, as I said in my opening remarks, we will get to the point where we will take legal action on some of the folks that are further behind on their payments.

This is one that we struggle with and I’ve...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to present the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation’s main estimates for the fiscal year 2011-2012, which requests a total GNWT contribution of $61.175 million. This is an increase of 64.7 percent from last year, due to the transfer of the Public Housing Rental Subsidy from the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. Including other revenue sources primarily from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the NWT Housing Corporation will have approximately $112 million available to invest in housing in the Northwest Territories in this...

Mr. Chair, obviously, if the LHO falls behind on the 90 percent, that takes money away from their O and M and their ability to operate. We would have to work with those LHOs very closely, because we do have some LHOs that are in a bit of a deficit and we have to work with them to come up with a debt recovery plan. It’s to their benefit to try and have the 90 percent rate, but at the same time we can’t put all of the onus on the LHO. The tenants have to come up with their share of it too. This puts LHOs into a bind because it affects sometimes their ability to do the maintenance and the O and M...

Mr. Speaker, we are, as Members know, reviewing the rent scale right now. The work is still ongoing. We are hoping that we are able to come forward soon with some recommendations and a discussion again with committee. But as to the number that the Member mentioned, the amount of money that is made in communities, these are the type of people that we want to graduate out of public housing and into the home ownership side and we are doing what we can as a corporation to try and accommodate them and try to get them into home ownership.

I believe we have made a lot of progress in the last little...

Both rental arrears and mortgage arrears are about $13 million, so we’re looking at $26 million total. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Land tenure does sometimes get to be a hindrance as to people’s ability to access some of our programs. However, we’ve been very fortunate lately that we’ve been working with a lot of the band communities and they’re making band land available to their constituents so that they’re able to access the home ownership programs, which helps the Housing Corporation quite a bit, but more importantly, it helps the residents of the community quite a bit because they will be assured they have land tenure and they’re able to put their house on it.

As far as Commissioner’s land goes...

We do what we can to try and accommodate our seniors in any way possible. The Preventive Maintenance Program -- when I was responding to Mr. Krutko -- when the opportunity arises, we’ll use folks from the community. It will be a Preventive Maintenance Program and it will be a contract that we would work out for certain types of work. We would have to make sure that the seniors are well aware of that. We try to -- and I think I committed to Mr. Beaulieu during question period at one time -- work with some of the seniors in their first language. We’d be able to so they understand exactly what...

Mr. Speaker, that would be the goal of the department, too, is to ensure that all local firefighters are well trained and the fire marshal and assistant fire marshal would be able to go through the equipment with them and do a checks and balance of all the equipment they have, to make sure things are working properly. It is our goal to ensure that we work with the communities as best we can to ensure that their fire departments are properly trained. Thank you.