Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I made most of my general comments to the Minister before he appeared in front of the Standing Committee on Finance. However, I did want to confirm with the Minister some of the concerns with regard to his current strategy. It is not a concern, but a clarification that most of the intent of the corporation now is to look at housing in the north through a H.A.P. program. I believe the modified H.A.P. program has received a lot of compliments. I want to compliment the Minister for putting all the work and effort into redesigning that program, which would make it easier and more accessible to the people of the north.
However, at the same time, I am concerned that we may be placing too much of our effort into the remodified H.A.P. program and may, at some point in time, lose sight of the public housing needs in the communities. Regardless of the survey unit that he initiated in which people had indicated they would like to own their own home, I hope that the Minister is cognizant of the fact that public housing is needed and that the units should be made available to the communities that request them. I wanted to make him aware that, in as much as we want to build H.A.P. units across the territories, there are some communities that will need public housing. We are fortunate in our community that we can use the rent supp program in lieu of the public housing units, but there are many communities across the north that would not be able to take advantage of that. They still need public units. I hope not all housing dollars allocated will go into just total H.A.P. units and that we will keep some for other programs to be made available.
Mr. Chairman, my comments are mainly to commend the Minister on changing the H.A.P. program to make it more easily accessible to the people of the north. I believe the hard work that he has put into this has come into fruition. I look forward to looking at the program in the next year to see what areas that have to be still worked on to ensure that this program is delivered effectively. I am pleased that we are getting a lot more units in totality for the dollars that we are spending. Thank you.