Robert C. McLeod

Mr. Chairman, the Member is right.; there was an effort to promote the sale of some of the existing public housing stock. We have managed to move a few. We have identified I think it is another 63 that could be sold. He is also correct that there was some concern with the cost of some of these units. We just have to make sure that a lot of the folks that maybe would buy these units would be able to maintain them. Some of them are older units. It is a concern there.

The vacant units is one that we hear obviously quite a bit about. In some communities we hear from folks there that have had units...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. With a lot of the money that we’ve gotten from the Canada Economic Action Plan, a lot of it was going more towards the multi-family-type units where there would be a cost savings to maintain and operate. We’re starting to see a lot more of that within the Housing Corporation, but a good portion of the money that we did receive was to go towards doing the multi. Also, a lot of it was going towards some of the repairs needed in the community and we’ve had some communities say that they’ve never had so much work before from the Housing Corporation. A lot of that is...

Yes, I will, Mr. Chair.

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Speaker, I will commit to the Member that, as I get information from the committee, I will share the information with the Members and get some feedback. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to welcome my constituency assistant, Leah Ipana, to the gallery.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There were a wide range of comments that were brought up and obviously housing is an issue that’s felt very strongly about in the communities.

Mr. Menicoche was speaking about the mould in some of the units. Most of the technical staff in the regions now do have mould remediation training, so they’re getting educated on how to deal with the mould issue.

The comments made by Mr. Hawkins on the barrier-free units, he talked about a strategy but a strategy is a report and we realize that we have probably 300 barrier-free units in our public housing inventory. For those...

This was part of developing a local market where people in the communities become homeowners. So if there’s a deal that can be worked out between two homeowners, because you have people that would receive the unit when they had a fairly large family and then they’ve all moved out so there’s opportunity there. If a person owns their own home in the community and they realize that it may have gotten too small for them, if they’ve done all their forgivable part or if they’ve paid everything up, then there’s an opportunity for them if there’s a market there -- in some cases there is -- to sell...

Hopefully we’ll be around in 2038 to see it, well, not hit zero. I’m thinking, as I said before, part of our strategy is the design of our homes going to the more multi-unit-type homes. I think we may come to a point where we may have to make some hard decisions on how we provide houses. Are we a public housing provider? The homeownership, we’ll have to see that. The bottom line is we’d still like to secure funding from Canada for the operation and maintenance and we’ll continue to lobby them for that part. But I think it’s going to come to a point where maybe it’s a question of asking the...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me, to my left, Mr. Jeff Polakoff, president of the NWT Housing Corporation, and I have, to my right, Mr. Jeff Anderson, vice-president of Finance with the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation.