Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The last comment was nothing more than just a shot at me, which I’m fine with, and a promo ad by the Minister. Mr. Speaker, we can’t continue to blame others. In this fiscal cycle we are only going to build less than one unit per community. He has not said one thing about trying to get new units in above the rate we are providing when we’re provided money by CMHC. He’s not telling us how he’s fought with Cabinet to get more money. He has not told us how he’s engaged private sector investment in communities that have no market. I’m not hearing anything innovative. I’m...

I want to thank the Minister for that direct and clear answer. My math now tells me we’re doing, or sorry, the government is proposing into the next fiscal cycle to build 0.91 houses on average across the 33 communities. If you are one of those communities who is lucky to get one of those houses, or if it’s two or three of them, you are very fortunate.

I want to ask the Minister, as the Minister of Housing, what is he doing to increase the new housing portfolio, increase our stock of public housing, increase our ability to provide the affordability housing measure? At this rate, we are not...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yet again we’re all witness to hear of these platitudes that actually provide no detail, and this is the frustration the public continues to have. If it’s a legitimate reason, I think all reasonable people would say, and fairly agree, that reviews need to be done and implementation needs to be done at the right pace, but yet all we hear is we need to act on this, we have stuff that’s been brought to his attention. My goodness, I mean, anyone can give that answer on any subject. That could mean almost anything. So, today is the day.

Why doesn’t the Minister get some of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Maybe for the benefit of the public – I’ve heard this answer before, and I’ll explain it when I say it – maybe the Minister can help us understand what “fully qualified” means.

As we all know, things like housing maintainers are not Red Seal tradespersons, so I want to make sure we have the right people on the ground making the assessment. The only thing I would say, Mr. Speaker, is a housing maintainer – this is my last question, Mr. Speaker – cannot go in and identify an electrical problem. They can suspect there’s an issue there, but they’re not qualified to say it...

I think I got most of them. Just to drill down slightly deeper, how many people are actually qualified at his point? I think the Minister had said they are training some folks, so let’s get that on the record. How many people are specifically qualified to identify mould and send it out for testing? Nobody can just stand there and say it’s this type of mould. It has to be sent out.

That said, what regions do they typically work? The Minister said just a moment ago, every public housing unit is condition rated every year, so I just want to make sure we’re doing this regularly and in which regions...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That’s exactly why I’m asking about the implementation plan, how we get this into the input of those regions into this plan so we actually get developing business, because business is the right people to help create the economy. That’s the detail I’ve been trying to get here today and I look forward to what the Minister is now going to say. Besides the plan, besides the implementation plan, let’s hear the details of how we’re going to get there and get people working. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, it’s my understanding that we were going to work on about three Economic Strategy plans and it was my understanding that they would be at least in the range of about $50,000 each. I’m doing that off memory, so it may not be the exact number for each plan, but I’m sure it’s a close number bracket.

That said, I’m trying to source out which particular regions this government is going to help focus in on and what type of discussion are we going to have to ensure that we focus in on those regions that need a lot of help and see if we can get their economies bustling so they can work in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to talk today about a very important subject, and that subject is jobs. Jobs are critical no matter where you live. They help your family, they help you and they make sure that the economy runs. Economic opportunities are absolutely critical throughout our Northwest Territories because they do bring those jobs so we can have Northerners working. A Northerner working is certainly a much happier one than one living on the system.

With true employment rates as low as they truly are, we cannot wait for the federal government to step in or some other person such as a...

I want to thank Member Moses for his very ministerial technique of dealing with that.

---Laughter

It’s funny no one on the Cabinet side is laughing. The only other thing that I think, I think pretty much it’s self-explanatory on some of the changes that folks who do read this very closely will probably figure out. Maybe we could get Mr. Moses, or if he would again use his technique to help us find out why we’re repealing some of the prohibitions on broadcasting. I think that a bit of a detailed answer on that would probably help the general public. It’s probably the only area that I show...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this issue. I am going to support the $40 million, but I do that with sort of the side comment of saying I feel that we have little choice. By obstructing the $40 million, I feel that we put the project and other types of headaches for us and we view them as let’s frustrate the process by causing a delay, I guess, in some manner or form.

Members have been very unhappy with the $40 million and how it has come about, but at the same time, I’m a realist and know that if we struck this $40 million, what frustrations have we caused? We...