Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, last week I attended a community consultation meeting on social housing issues conducted by the NWT Housing Corporation at the insistence of the Minister of Housing. The Baffin district manager gave a very thorough, but low-key briefing on a whole range of current housing issues in my constituency.
Madam Speaker, one issue leapt out at the meeting, like a dark cloud blotting out the sun. It turns out that the Housing Corporation is proposing a major rent review, which I understand translates into lifting the proposed rent ceilings for social housing tenants in Nunavut. We are told this is driven by CMHC cuts to O and M funding to our government's social housing program this coming fiscal year and we are told it is driven by fairness and equity. Madam Speaker, many of my constituents were lured, or even intimidated, into moving from camps onto the land by federal officials, on the promise of free housing, health and education benefits. They are still alive. They still remember the promises made to induce them to leave their camps and the veiled threats they were given.
I will never forget how one elderly constituent, now deceased, explained to me the pain he suffered on being told by an RCMP officer that he must shoot his own dog team before moving into town.
Madam Speaker, the federal government is taking away the support for public housing, we learned, but it is the Government of the Northwest Territories, and its Housing Corporation, who are proposing to raise the rent. If our government has accepted this change demanded by the federal government, who is going to confront the federal government about breaking their promise to my Inuit constituents? Has our government accepted the deletion of O and M funding without a whimper and decided rent increases must go ahead? Or, is this community consultation going to be a real consultation process where my constituents, and this House, will have a chance to say no to rent increases and no to federal cutbacks?
Madam Speaker, as I understand it...