It is good to hear the Minister is willing to, perhaps, make some changes in the future. The Minister also indicated that the chiefs have to come to an agreement with

him in regard to building houses. There is an agreement that the chiefs made in my area in 1921. It is called Treaty 11. Part of that treaty stated that there is going to be shelter provided to the people. Otherwise, they would not have signed that treaty in 1921. That is an agreement which I am going by.

This housing policy does not reflect that. I know this is a public government, but you have to deal with everyone. You have to take that into consideration, as well. This is why we have been saying this all along. In the past, I have participated with the NWT Housing Corporation and at the board level as a chief. Other chiefs have done that because they see it as a way of honouring that treaty, but once you change that entire program you change the entire concept. It is no longer a way of addressing that agreement made in 1921 with the chiefs. I wanted you to know that there is an agreement in place already that you should become aware of.

If I could dispute the needs survey, I would like to do that. There are families in Fort Liard who still live in tents. Even though we call it the green belt of the Northwest Territories because it is warm there most of the time, we still get temperatures that go to minus 40 degrees Celsius. There are still families with children living in tents. Even though we may have had a number of home ownerships delivered to us in the past, I would like to go back 20 years and see how much was pumped into those communities like that and compare them to all the other communities in the north and see how much went to where. Just recently, they have been building some of these houses just to catch up in some of these communities. You have to take that into consideration. You have to go back a longer period of time than the last two or three years. That is a point I want to raise with you.

The band, because they did not receive help from the Housing Corporation in the past, has been able to build on units with logs and some of these units the people are living in are not very well built, but they are considered homes. Compared to the types of houses that have been going into the communities recently, such as the home ownership ones, there is no comparison at all because of the condition of these older houses. Some of them are in very bad shape. I have been in them and there is a real need to get more houses into the communities.

There is overcrowding and so forth. The band went out of its way was able to get some social housing without the help of the NWT Housing Corporation, a few years ago. They were able to build some social houses there because of the need to catch up for the demand of housing. They did this on their own. The understanding in the community is that, in the future, by going out and getting social housing on their own, they were not supposed to be penalized by the Housing Corporation for having the initiative and the ability to get their own houses. This is the understanding the communities had in the past when they went after their own social houses. According to the needs survey, that is included.

The feeling in the community is, they should have left it the way it was. That way, they would have received more houses. Because they had the ability to go out and do this on their own, they feel they have been penalized for it. They should not be penalized. It should be the other way, where they should be commended for their efforts to try to provide shelter, which is a basic necessity to people. People need shelter. I wanted to make those comments at this time, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.