Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is correct; if we were to take this all on, it would cost the Government of the Northwest Territories a lot of money and obviously we are concerned with the declining funding. We have been trying to engage the federal government in sitting down with all jurisdictions in Canada to find ways where we could convince them that this is a program, the CMHC funding obviously is something that we seriously need otherwise all jurisdictions are going to have to start dipping into their own funds. This is one that I think that we need to continue to be very aggressive...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In 2010-2011, and I’ve used this figure a couple of times, we lost $676,000. In 2011-2012, this upcoming year, we’re looking at $754,895 that we won’t be getting from CMHC. I think cumulative to date we are about $11 million that we’ve declined from CMHC and that’s from 1997-1998 up until now.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member makes a very good point and it’s a concern we’ve heard from a lot of small communities in the Northwest Territories. Recognizing that, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs -- and I think we’re going to be debating it when our budget comes forward -- have identified funding to start a training process, because we see our responsibility as being able to get out there at the regional level, have regional training workshops, get into the communities, work with the firefighters in the communities in identifying their needs and their shortcomings as...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is correct; that is the money for the shelter policy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We recognize as well as the Member that the biggest need percentage-wise obviously is in some of the smaller communities. So we recognize that and we try to tailor our infrastructure plan to that. We continue to try to adjust this on an ongoing basis and we continue to work with the other departments. So I think we’re finding ways that we can incorporate the needs survey into how we allocate units and it’s something I think we’ll continue to do in the future. We have to, I mean, we hear it as well as most people that, especially from the MLAs and I think we heard the...

Mr. Speaker, after the March 31st deadline, the Advisory Committee will review all the input that is received from across the Northwest Territories. They will then come up with a set of regulations. As far as the time frame, I am not even sure the exact date when I would be getting it in my office, but I do know shortly after the March 31st deadline the Safety Advisory Committee will be meeting to review all the input that they have had from across the Northwest Territories and putting together their final product and then it will reach my office. Thank you very much.

We have, I think, served some notices right now that we have as part of the 50. There are still a number of them that are pending right now, but we do have some that have already been served, so that process has already been started. As far as the actual number, the total value of our mortgage portfolio is $86 million and the value of our forgivable loans is $45 million. The value of our repayable loans is $41 million dollars. Thank you.

The Member makes a very good point, because it is our intent to try and work with those communities that don’t have LHOs and try to come up with some kind of a service agreement as the Member had mentioned. We find that lately we have been making some good progress. We have some communities where there is actually quite a large number of vacant units in there and we’ve kind of entered into an agreement with them to keep an eye on those units. So we’re making progress on that front and we’re looking forward to, as we converge some of these units into public housing, working with the local band...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We had the original date of October as the cut-off date. We heard concerns from across the Northwest Territories, industry, and a lot of other folks involved. They had some concerns with the length of time they were given to look over the draft regulations. We extended it, as the Member said in his Member’s statement, twice. The date we have now is March 31st for them to get their input in on the regulations. I can assure the Member that ultimately the final decision will rest with my office and I can assure them that we will make sure that there is a quality product...

Really lots. We have 428 active files, number of clients. Thank you.