Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The concerns the Member has brought up are Territories-wide concerns. We are getting those concerns from a lot of people in the Territories, that the HAP program has become too narrow. It does not meet the majority of the people's needs, so one of the first things we are going to undertake is to do a needs survey with the community, identify the community's preference and the types of homes they need, and that is going to also drive the development of new home-ownership and other housing programs. By the fall of this year we will have a new range of housing programs in place for next year's building season.
It does not seem fair to me that a person that makes $50,000 or $49,000 gets a $100,000 house, and a person that makes $51,000 does not get anything. That is not a fair way of distributing things, so we will be addressing new programs for those that are over the threshold as well as for those that are in more need under the threshold. There has got to be a broader range of programs, and we will be doing that. It will be in place for next year's building season, but it will not be in place for this year's building season. As it is right now, Mr. Gargan, lower income people, even though they are not eligible at the outset, can become eligible if they prove, for example, that they burn straight wood to bring the cost of operating the unit down. In the smaller communities like Jean Marie River or wherever, they can still get a unit if they prove that.
I realize that some of the older home-ownership programs, the first units that Indian Affairs put in, in the West, are in pretty bad shape now, as well as some of the SSHAG units. Communities went out and harvested small logs and slapped something together in the SSHAG program, as it was called, so those have to be adjusted as well. It may not make sense for the corporation to put a HIP, home improvement program, into those units because you do not gain a lot of ground and you spend a lot of money, so it may make sense just to replace the unit. That will be addressed as well, but as I have been telling people who have concerns about the program, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. That light will get wider the farther into the fall we go, and we will have new programs and they will be programs that meet the communities' needs because the communities, and the Members as well, are going to have some input into how those programs are developed. Thank you.