Robert C. McLeod

Mr. Speaker, our staff has been in the community on a regular basis working with the community. They will continue to do so until they come up with a plan to resolve all their financial issues. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we are concerned with the particular community the Member has mentioned. Our role is we have been asked by the community, the new community council, to come in and work with them on coming up with a plan to address all the financial issues that they are dealing with right now. They have asked us to come in and we have complied. Our officials are working closely with them right now to resolve some of the outstanding issues. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, that is a very good concern. It is something I will commit to the Member that I will speak to the commission about trying to address and maybe have an alternate medical person that we can get medical advice from when a person is not there. That way, we won’t have a delay in processing some of the claims. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, there is a worker’s advisor that works closely with the workers and gets some information on their case. They do try and get some legal opinions for the injured workers. Communication has improved. WSCC has gone a long way in trying to improve the services that they offer to clients. We have 86 percent of our injured workers that are paid within the first 20 days but there is still the other 14 percent that we need to be concerned about. We are taking steps to address that and improve how we offer services to clients. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to share with my colleagues the great success stories about all 33 community governments in the Northwest Territories.

As Members know, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs is the lead department working with community governments to implement the requirements for funding under the Canada-NWT Gas Tax Agreement.

One condition of this agreement is that all 33 community governments in the Northwest Territories complete an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan, or ICSP, by March 31, 2010. The ICSP includes a community strategic...

The subject of evictions is one that we’ve been hearing a lot about lately. There is a process that all the LHOs go through to carry out the evictions. They start with termination notices and it goes from there. The LHOs have their policy that they abide by, and for the most part they are the authority. They do have that authority. We do hear from a number of constituents who feel that they’ve been unfairly treated. We’ve followed up with a lot of the LHOs to get some answers for some of the questions that they had. I’ve committed to the Member in this particular case I will follow up and be...

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to give my opinion on that, but I will tell him that there is a process that is in place. The LHOs do follow the process and that is why we are at the stage that we are at today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; we were out consulting on a new initiative. I can assure the Member that the new Volunteer Support Initiative will be completed by this fall. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I will follow up with the department immediately and I’ll look to have some kind of response back to the Member and Members by the end of session. Thank you.

The LHOs basically operate or are run by a board. We do have some involvement in the financing that we provide to them. The Minister doesn’t normally give direction or orders to the LHOs. We can raise concerns with them, but we’ll continue to try and do what we can as a corporation to help tenants across the Northwest Territories deal with the arrears issue.

We’re $10 million in public housing arrears right now and with the money from the federal government declining, it’s important more than ever to start collecting on some of these arrears. It is something that’s on our radar and something...