Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Madam Speaker. You know, I know there's a lot of experts here, and I struggle to understand how something doesn't get built to code, and then I know sometimes the experts get in fights about what actually the National Building Code says. So my question for the Minister of the housing, do her experts in the Housing Corporation agree with the fire marshal's assessment of the National Building Code, or are we in one of these situations we're having a battle of the experts in the GNWT? Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to have quite a few comments so I appreciate committee indulging me.

This was a private Member's bill brought forward by MLA O'Reilly. I thank him for doing that. It has started a lot of conversations in the department with industry, and within the committee. Ultimately this report has no recommendations and as noted by our chair, there wasn't the committee was not able to reach agreement on whether to proceed with it.

Firstly, I think there's a bit of a learning curve on how to deal with private Member's bills, and what exactly can be done in that case...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I suspect it's the boring explanation "due to software" that I am most interested in, Mr. Speaker. I note, on that list, was a very short list of services we're tracking wait times for and did not include a number of procedures and surgeries which is where I get most of my constituent complaints. I'm just wondering if there is any work to be done to create some sort of dashboard where that information is available publicly. I know this is done across all the provinces in Canada. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One of the key indicators for evaluating how a health system works is wait times. And right now, you can go to every other jurisdiction or every province in Canada and look up their wait times. And I'd encourage people to do this. If you go to the BC one, it's actually quite an amazing database. You can see every single surgeon and how many procedures they currently have waiting, at which hospitals, at which region. You can see the number of weeks for every single procedure that could be scheduled in the health care system in live reported data, Mr. Speaker. And...

Sorry, man.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can the Minister maybe just put that in context? You know, it sounds great that we're retrofitting 176 units. Where does that get us at the end of you know, assuming this fiscal we do that, how many more units would we anticipate need major retrofits? Is there a backlog. Can I just get some context of what $10 million in retrofits actually gets us with regards to the giant backlog of maintenance we need. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just also want to understand, so every year the Housing Corp puts $10 million in here for M and I, you know, essentially retrofit and putting buildings up, which means it or is the other hundred are we just spending $100 million a year on O and M? There's $100 million a year to staff the Housing Corp and make sure the lights on being spent and only $10 million to actually upkeep units? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay, so capital is for retrofits, and I actually see no new builds here. Is that correct, that the Housing Corp is planning to build no new houses?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I understand that we fund the Housing Corporation differently, because they're an arm'slength corporation, through a grant through the Department of Finance. And then they pass the information, they give us a capital number, and they consistently give us $10,625,000. But I'll note that the revised estimates for last fiscal were actually $70 million, and the revised estimates for the year before that were actually $21 million. So that's good. That's good that they say they're going to spend $10 million, and then they spend a lot more on capital.

But can someone just...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yeah, I would appreciate the Minister getting back to the House with information on how or what software we need to do this. I know we are purchasing a new electronic medical records system which will cost millions of dollars. And I guess I wanted to also know, as I mentioned in my statement, when we did the vaccine roll out, the software, however we got it, was great. I think everyone who could book online and could see their appointments and get reminders was very happy with that software but I'll note, with perhaps the exception of occupational therapy and...