Robert C. McLeod

That’s correct, Mr. Chair.

Not that I’m aware of. I don’t recall an evaluation of the SRC. It’s a fairly new organization. However, I suppose if there’s a feeling amongst Members that this is something that needs to be considered, then we’d have to have a look at that. But the short answer is no.

Mr. Speaker, going to the MLAs and Ministers should be a last resort. However, without an appeals process in place, we’re seeing a lot of that and we’re hoping to get away with that. If this could be dealt with at the district level, that would be our preference. They would be able to speak to the district director and make an appeal to them and see what comes out of that. Hopefully, by the time we go through the next application cycle we’ll have fewer and fewer appeals being made to the Ministerial and MLA level.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The ones that we have in headquarters are usually support to the regional operation folks. So the bulk of our positions and the bulk of our work is done in the region and these folks here are just support to the regions. Thank you.

When we do the water and sewer increase in funding, a lot of things are taken into consideration. A couple things that the Member exactly spoke of is the distance between his community and Deep Water Lake and all that’s taken into consideration. The capital portion of it is not taken into consideration.

We are working with MACA on a land development strategy, but we have made significant progress in the last little while. Communities where there was some land tied up are starting to make more and more land available to the Housing Corp, because they realize too that it’s beneficial to them. We’ve seen a couple of good examples of that. If that partnership continues to flourish then I think we’re going to see that we’ll be able to have more and more access to land. As the Member knows, there’s lots of band land in some of the communities. That’s an ongoing process and it’s one that we’re quite...

Mr. Chairman, we are aware of that. There have been some concerns with that. We have taken some steps to address that. Some of it is we send the list out there. We know everything that is needed for a particular project. Sometimes some of it doesn’t make it to the community. The folks that are responsible for that project will usually do a check. If there are pieces that are missing, they will then advise the supplier and they would have to make sure that the piece is there. It is something that I have heard about. It is not a huge issue as much as it used to be. Still, we were supposed to be...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We will take committee’s advice and input when we’re developing the strategy. We need to make sure that when the money is declining, we’re able to meet the challenge. We do continue to support local development. I know from experience that there were times where the Housing Corporation would make a commitment to buy materials from local producers and distribute them to the LHOs, and unfortunately these products didn’t quite measure up and there were issues with that. But we’re always looking for ways that we can continue to support and we’ll make it part of our...

We’re looking to sit down with committee as soon as possible. I think the offer has been made to discuss some of the community needs survey numbers. I’ve also offered to sit with committee and get their feedback on some of what they’d like to see for the Housing Corporation. We’re hoping, our intent is, this infrastructure budget, this is one that we’re passing today, the budget that we bring forward next year I think will reflect the community needs survey and where we need to put what units. Obviously we’ll be seeking input from committee on that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, a couple years ago we had an issue where we were looking for material supply, and it was a tender that was for the whole Northwest Territories. So we had some concerns from some of the district providers, so that was changed and they broke it out into districts so the districts would be able to provide quotes on it.

The supply, ship and erect, it is a concern to some of the smaller operators. The ones I know have the capacity to deal with it, but there are some that are just comfortable doing the labour part of it only because they don’t want to have the...