Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I forgot one question the Member had. There is also some work being done on the use of off-shore money for housing. Thank you.

Thank you. General comments. Line by line?

Agreed.

---Agreed

Thank you. Page 03-10, NWT Housing Corporation, total O and M, $52.442 million. Mr. Antoine.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a concern about the Minister's new "axe" program, as they call it in Fort Liard. This new program is having a negative effect on the community. It is not helping the community, in fact, it is going the other way. I was involved in the decision to move in that

direction, and I thought, from what the Minister was telling us in the House, was that he was going to improve housing delivery. However, the real effect in a small community like Fort Liard -- normally they have been getting about six, seven or eight HAP houses in the past and they have developed a training component around it where they have about 15 employees being trained over the last few years and they had a good team. Now what has happened with this access program is that they are only getting one. So you are looking at 15 families with no employment. I am wondering if this new program is helping. In my constituency it is not going to help, Mr. Minister. How is it going to help? You said it was going to improve the situation. Initially, when this new program came in, it was not helping, in fact, it has caused some real concern in the communities.

Another thing coming in, and was raised by my colleague from Thebacha, is the requirement by the Housing Corporation to have the band councils pass a resolution releasing band land to the NWT Housing Corporation, in order to have a house built for a band member. Many band councils have had dealings with leasing some of their band lands in the past. Some have taken BCRs to not release any more land. In these two areas, the policy is going against band policy and it is causing concern. It is getting to the point where people are saying, "What is the use of applying for houses? Why do we not let the Housing Corporation build houses for everyone else and forget the band members?" It is becoming very complicated. Obviously this policy is not developed by Dene and aboriginal people. I know you are the Minister and you are aboriginal, but this policy is obviously not developed by us. Whoever your advisers are should go back to the drawing board. You sold it to us, Mr. Minister, and I took your word for it at that time, but I am finding it very difficult to see what benefit it is going to have in a community.

You are going to hear more about this, not only from me, but if you travel into the communities you will hear it yourself. I am telling you what I am hearing. I do not know how long this is going to go, but right now there is a negative reaction at the community level. I am very concerned that it might not meet the needs of people in the communities. I know your staff are going into the communities and doing their work, but it is going to be some time before this new housing program is going to be accepted, if at all.

I attended the Deh Cho regional council meeting and the Deh Cho tribal council meeting where the Housing Corporation representative attended. The idea of releasing band land in order to have a house built for a band member was introduced and it was not favourably accepted. There was an attempt by your corporation officials to try to sell this idea to leaders of the community, but it is not acceptable. I understand the releasing of band land is an important component of your new strategy and if you do not get it, how are you going to go about it? If it is a requirement by band councils to release band land in order to receive the new housing package, if it cannot be achieved, then I guess band members will not receive any more houses. That seems to be the message of your officials to the chiefs and band councils. It is not a very straight cut program. I was wondering if the Minister is aware of this situation, and if he is, what is he going to do to try to resolve the problems in the communities? How is he dealing with the

concerns arising out of the communities in terms of the new access program? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We did go through a consultation process with Members regarding the new "axecess" program. It was a long process. We received input from people, redid it, came back and we now have what we have. I told people at that time that this is what we have, it is a new program, we go out and we deliver it this year and we ask for input. It is on paper, it can be changed. We need input in order to know if we are going in the right direction.

As far as any negative response to the program, the only negative response I have received so far is there is not enough housing, and the band land issue. So, they both have to be addressed.

As far as the band land issue, I am not interested in bands giving a band council resolution to give up their band lands. That is not my intention at all. My intention is that somehow the chiefs have to come to an agreement with us that we can deliver our program and policy on band land. It is very simple. They want houses and I want to build houses on the band land. I want to help them solve their housing needs. We are all grown-ups. We should be able to work out a solution, if we can get together and meet, we have to take the time. I made a commitment already to the Deh Cho chief that I would do that. We have to meet with the South Slave chiefs, as well, to do that. My chiefs, as well, will let me know that. There is no way they are willing to give up band lands, but we have a problem that has to be overcome. I am sure we can work out some solution.

As far as the access program and Fort Liard getting one unit, thank God we have the access program or else Fort Liard might not have received any units. The access program allowed us to deliver more units. Fort Liard received 18 home ownership units which were allocated to the community and are ready for occupancy by the end of April. The needs survey says that Fort Liard needs 33 houses. That would reduce it down to 15. It is allocated on need from the needs survey, regardless of whether it was a HAP program or access program. If we did not change the program, then Fort Liard would have received less than one. We would have had less.

Members have to remember that if we did not change the access program, I think we would have been able to build approximately 125 houses. This way, we are solving around 370 needs. The Hay River reserve did not have any units either, but they came back and said they disputed the needs survey. We are going in and checking to make sure the need is correctly stated. If Fort Liard has a problem with its need, that is what it should state and not say, "It is the HAP program that did this to us," because it is not, it is the need. Everything is given out according to need.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In no way did I mean to circumvent any agreement that the federal government has with treaty Indians by signing a treaty in 1921. I make it very clear that the territorial government has never taken on the responsibility from the federal government to provide housing to treaty Indians. That is a federal government responsibility. I cannot find any trace or paper. I have researched that. Minister Siddon said in one meeting that the territorial government is responsible for treaty Indians. There is nothing in any research that I could find. I am sure treaty people would have to consent to that type of responsibility.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On that note, there are a number of transfers which have happened in the past without the involvement of the treaty chiefs or aboriginal groups, back in 1969 and 1970 and on down the line. You have the Housing Corporation transfer, Education and Social Services, and now the health billing dispute. The argument the federal government is making is that the health billing dispute is part of the devolution which has been carrying on, and part of devolution is the Housing Corporation. That is the argument. All along, treaty Indians and aboriginal people in the north have had no input in what they call devolution. This is one of the areas of dispute where it has to be cleared up.

What are the fiduciary responsibilities which the federal government has to aboriginal people in the north, particularly if you have treaties? You have Treaty 8 and 11 which were signed up here. What kind of responsibilities does the federal government have toward people who have these treaties? In the meantime, you have transfers which have happened, and housing is one of them. There is no place that I can recall where the responsibility for housing for people who have treaties has been devolved to this government along with the funding that goes with it. For how many years have we been dealing with it?

I mentioned earlier that I served on the board of directors for the NWT Housing Corporation and at that time I was chief. I asked the board, at that time, to look at the treaty responsibility of the NWT Housing Corporation, and I have never received a clear answer or a clear indication at all from the NWT Housing Corporation staff who did research for us on what the responsibilities were. It might be some place buried in your department. I know they hired someone at one time, for a period of time, to do the research. I do not know what the findings were.

My point is that the responsibility has to be cleared up. It has to be made absolutely clear what the responsibility for treaty Indians are with the territorial and federal governments in terms of housing. I know the chiefs have always made that point, and this will be a contentious issue forever if we do not deal with it. I would like to somehow have it dealt with once and for all. I just want to leave that as a comment, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, would like this dealt with because all the research we have clearly states that the responsibility for treaty housing was not turned over to the territorial government. The feds would like to unload it on us, I know. If Members have any advice on that issue, I would like to hear how we could solve this issue and get clear answers on who has that responsibility. Possibly what we should be doing is challenging Indian Affairs for money for treaty housing. We should ask them for that money, demand it saying it is their responsibility and bring it to a head.

I would be happy to provide the Member with a complete briefing on the needs survey. The needs survey is completed but it only looks at the need and not the past units which were built. It only tells us how many people are in need. It tells us what type of need they are in, whether it is a financial problem they have or whether it is an inadequate house which has not been constructed well, or does not have running water, it will also tell us overcrowding, so then we can allocate houses and that is how we allocate houses. For that person who told Fort Liard that those 20 rental units they constructed would not affect any future allocations was really leading Liard astray. It has to affect your allocation because it draws down on your need. It means that the community needs less because they have solved 20 needs. That is how it works. I would be happy to supply to the Member a complete briefing on how this needs is done, and then if there are concerns from his community I would be happy to address those concerns. Thank you.

Perhaps, you should do this complete briefing with Fort Liard. That way you could show them your "axe."

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would be pleased to go to Fort Liard. I have to go to Liard, Nahanni and Trout Lake sometime in the future.

Agreed.

---Agreed

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I have no problems with the amount of $52 million. However, if you look at the capital there is only about $30 million now. As far as the comparability goes with regard to the operations and maintenance budget, the delivery of housing programs is worth about $30 million. I think the department is receiving too much with regard to administration costs.

I was in Hay River about one month ago, and the corporation's district office has expanded. They have new people and new PYs, too, I presume. When I went to the district manager's office, he used to have a fair sized office and now I think they have cut it in half and diverted some parts of it to new office space. Are we expanding in that area, or are we reducing to make it comparable with the reduction of the capital which has been occurring? You indicated we are losing many capital dollars. Do we need that many staff?