Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I am going to speak about the lease costs here. Lease cost to the people in the communities. Currently the lease costs are very high. I indicated that in my questions to the Minister earlier about the cost of the lease being two to four months' salary for individuals and that. Of course as a committee, we are opposing the quick implementation of the increases to the land leases, land rent, land taxes, whatever, and what we are proposing is phased-in increases. I am totally against increases because they are too high as it is. I mean some are not that high...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is all I have.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, committee wishes to consider Tabled Document 26118(2), Northwest Territories Main Estimates, 20172018, with the Departments of Land and Justice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, a couple of questions for the Minister. I would like to ask the Minister if the Corrections, that includes the Correction Division out of headquarters, follows the affirmative action policy? Thank you.

Would the Minister agree that if an individual family was homeless and that the only thing preventing the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation from allocating a unit to that homeless family was a policy that could easily be adjusted, would the Minister adjust that policy?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chair, I move that this committee defer further consideration of the estimates for the Department of Lands at this time. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Marci, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation if the policy of the Housing Corporation is to house as many people as possible with their social housing inventory? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With all the laughter, I think the deputy minister didn't hear the question; I was asking about Akaitcho. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The assessed value being applied to any piece of property when you're developing a tax, you use a mill rate; currently, the department is using 10 per cent as a mill rate. So effectively it's not really a mill rate; it's a rent, but they're essentially using 10 per cent of the value.

So you have a piece of property there that's appraised in accordance with the land policy at roughly $40,000, which is pretty standard across the small communities; the taxes or the rent or the lease on that property is $4,000. That's totally unreasonable. I don't want to talk about the increase to the minimums...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks again to the deputy. I have another question: I wonder if the Minister can give us the same type of detail that we've just heard on the Akaitcho land use plan? Thank you.