Madam Speaker, mindful of your admonition on Friday that Members should try to stay within the time limit, I have to confess that my Member's statement, for some reason -- it must have been the typist -- came out longer than two and a half minutes. So I'm going to probably go over, and I should confess that at the beginning, not at the end. But it's good stuff, Madam Speaker, so I'm going to start.
Madam Speaker, the government's staff housing strategy looks great, in principle. I'm sure that all Members agree with helping government employees who want to become home owners to do so. There are many in my riding. However, once again, just as with the rent increases, serious problems have arisen in implementing the strategy.
The main problem that I see -- and I'm not only speaking for Iqaluit -- is that quite apart from the sale of staff housing, whether staff housing is sold to employees or not, this strategy, unfortunately, will not deal with the fundamental problem of a huge and growing shortage of staff housing in the entire region, and I suspect in other regions, as well.
The reason is, Madam Speaker, that since the government has been talking about getting out of staff housing, mainly by selling units off but also by raising rents to encourage home ownership, hardly any new staff houses have been built or leased in Baffin Island. That's for at least the last ten years unless, that is, they burned down.
At the recent Baffin leaders' summit, for example, we heard from the Department of Social Services that they cannot hire a social worker in Broughton Island or in Hall Beach. Why? No staff housing.
I know that the 1994-95 budget of the Department of Justice contains funds to hire a community justice worker to support the elders' group which is very active in justice in Pond Inlet. Great news. Yet, our government is busy selling off existing staff houses, even a duplex, even to a term employee I've heard, although there are already no surplus staff housing units in Pond Inlet. Will Pond Inlet get its new community justice worker? Where will that person live?
In Iqaluit, a long awaited alcohol and drug treatment centre is near completion.