Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to present the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation’s main estimates for the fiscal year 2010-2011, which requests a total GNWT contribution of $37.122 million. This is a decrease of 1.8 percent from the 2009-2010 Main Estimates.

Including revenue sources such as client rent, public housing subsidy, CMHC cost-shared funds and lease and mortgage payments from clients, the Housing Corporation will have approximately $138 million available to spend on housing in the Northwest Territories in 2010-2011.

Federal funding for housing programs in the Northwest...

Mr. Speaker, we will continue to learn as we go along here and identifying housing issues that could have potential impact across the Northwest Territories, especially if, as the Member says, the pipeline goes ahead. There will be quite a crunch. It is always an ongoing issue with the Housing Corporation to always update our information and make sure we are prepared for any future expansion of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right; housing did take part. They were a part of the financing of the report that came out that was being worked on. Housing will continue to be at the table through this whole process and see it through in identifying housing solutions for the city of Yellowknife. Thank you.

I do acknowledge that there is a serious arrears problem, to the tune of about $10 million. A lot of these arrears may have been accumulated before the transfer, so we can’t say that this was a direct response of the transfer. The local housing authorities, when the transfer first went over, realized there were issues with the assessment. This was all new being rolled out. They were very good at recognizing that if you weren’t assessed properly, they would adjust it and your arrears would automatically go down. So they’ve taken steps to deal with that when the transfer first happened. I admit...

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to provide Members with information on the housing needs data that has been collected through the 2009 NWT Community Survey.

According to this new data, core housing need in the Northwest Territories has risen from 16 percent in 2004 to 19 percent in 2009. Household need varied across our Territory from a high of 36 percent in the Nahendeh to a low of 14 percent in the North Slave. Approximately 27 percent of households in the Beaufort-Delta were in core need compared with 36 percent in the Sahtu and 17 percent in the South Slave.

The increase in core housing need is...

We’ll always continue to work with NWTAC, which represents all communities across the Territories, and LGANT, the local government administrators. We’ll continue with them. The way the process is laid out now -- and I’ve responded in some of my answers to some of the other Members’ questions that we try to spread everything around -- we want to give communities the opportunity to make these decisions themselves. If there is money available and it’s cost-shared, then they would be responsible for matching those dollars. If we start doing one-offs again, then we’ll get into a situation where...

The communities are continuing to do what they can to do control dust in their communities. The problem is we’ve transferred all the capital dollars to the communities, so they have the ability to make their own decisions. As a department, we have no infrastructure dollars left.

It’s a fairly new process. Communities are starting to buy into it. A lot of communities are identifying dust control as a priority and they are starting to put some of their funds towards it. We continue to work with the communities, with their infrastructure plans and identifying some of their priorities and even...

Mr. Speaker, I will follow up with the corporation. I know from the notes that I have, that the actual layout of the process is pretty well complete and it is just a matter of timeline. I will follow up with the corporation. I will communicate that to the Member. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. In my answers to the Member for Mackenzie Delta before, I did say that there was no official appeal process right now, which is true. We are in the process of developing an appeals process for both those that have been turned down for the Housing Choices Program and those that are in public housing. We are developing an appeals process and we are just in the process of finalizing that. We will probably share that with the Members, and it will go out there and we will have a communication plan to make sure that all the clients, tenants and the regions have an...

We’re always reviewing how our programs operate and getting feedback from clients out there, and Members, as part of that process. Of course, we’d like to have an application process that’s as transparent as possible, because there are a lot of people out there stating exactly what the Member has said. They have concerns in that they apply and apply. And we hear about it, and obviously Members across the floor hear about it. We just want to assure people out there that we do want to be as transparent as possible. If they have issues with their application process, we’re always willing to...