Robert Villeneuve

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I just want to talk about this government’s approach to achieve a public service that is more representative of the population it supposedly serves. When this government introduced a new approach to developing a home-grown public service back in 2002 by proposing to phase out the affirmative action policy and taking the new employment equity approach because, "It will be based on a philosophy that employees will hire a more representative workforce because it made good business and operational sense to do so, Mr. Speaker."

Mr. Speaker, we are now four years...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If there is no grant-in-kind, if you bring the library up to standard, the Open Door Society up to standard, the cultural centre and the Deh Cho Hall up to standard, who pays for that? Is that coming out of the government coffers because we are such good people or the building is of such high sentimental value to the community? What are the reasons for the government to agree to do all these upgrades at no charge? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My next question is how much of this $3.5 million is the government contributing in-kind to all these other facilities to bring them up to standard to keep their doors open? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have a problem with the community governments taking over their own dust control issues. Is this government going to provide an adequate amount of funding to these community governments to address their dust control issues? Through the EBA report on dust control, there’s a lot of recommendations in that report, and is the government going to implement some of those recommendations? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know that a lot of LHOs around the NWT say their needs are so and so, but basically they just want to be treated fair and equitable with other communities of the NWT. Everybody wants their fair share. That is understandable. I want to mention to the Minister, with this housing authority, I don’t see people pounding on the Yellowknife Housing Authority’s door to ask for more public housing. If I see an ad in the paper for rent, like subsidized public housing, in the newspaper, I know it is for information only but it is also advertising that, hey, we have public...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. My questions are going to be directed to the Honourable David Krutko, Minister of Housing, with respect to the Affordable Housing Strategy that’s going to be rolling out in the next three years. Having worked here and lived here in Yellowknife for quite a number of years myself, I just don’t really see the real need for more public housing in Yellowknife because the public housing units here, there are not many people pounding on their doors or phoning their MLAs everyday, as they are in the smaller communities, to raise public housing issues and the need for public...

Why is that, Mr. Speaker? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, I don’t have a problem with the communities assuming control of their municipal and community affairs, but is the government going to provide any money? Mr. Minister, if you could just tell me straightforward, is the government going to flag money to these communities to say okay, here’s $100,000 to address your dust control issues? Is that in the works, or is this coming out of these Northern Strategy dollars, which is for capacity building or for recreation or for youth development, not dust control? That wasn’t included in the Northern Strategy, as far as I...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, a lot of our smaller communities, you know, and our elders and people with respiratory ailments like asthma, the coming of summer means the coming of dust; the lack of dust control in these small communities. With the recent removal of $738,000 for dust control from the Municipal and Community Affairs main estimates it bereaves me to tell these people that, hey, you know what, the dust control issue is no longer a Municipal and Community Affairs priority. It probably never has been under control. The government has spent numerous amounts of dollars looking at...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With the latest briefings that we did receive from the Minister, all of these housing units, there are a lot of single detached units, single family condos, multi-family condos, but there are 62 units that still equates to $11 million that the government is going to put into the housing market here in Yellowknife. Is that going to disrupt the current market housing framework here in Yellowknife? Are prices for houses suddenly going to go up? Are they going to go down? Has the government even looked at what the ramifications are going to be in the larger centres...