Madam Speaker, I have been looking at Hansard and looking at some of the questions. I would like to bring in perspective the process that we started with and why we are here in terms of the long-term staff housing policy, or strategy, so everyone will have the same information. Some of the questions and supplementaries will be incorporated in this explanation.
Madam Speaker, the long-term staff housing strategy is the end product of many years of work and a variety of studies. The first study was conducted in 1979 by a joint task force consisting of management and unions, which the previous Government Leader was involved with and lead. This was followed in 1985 by the Special Committee on Housing and decisions were then made by three different governments, under three different Government Leaders, to get out of staff housing. The recommendations from the studies and directions from the different cabinets were incorporated in the long-term staff housing strategy which was developed in its present form between 1989 and 1991, finalized in 1992 and approved by Cabinet in November 1992. As well, several short-term steps were taken along the way.
In 1989 and again in 1990, a process for making single-family housing units available for sale to long-term employees in every community except Yellowknife was approved with the first sales closing early in the year of 1992. Madam Speaker, in early 1991, the first phase of the long-term strategy was approved which extends the sales to all employees residing in single detached units, including Yellowknife. This was announced in the Assembly on February 27, 1992, with the first sales being closed in August 1992.
Public sales of surplus units began in Yellowknife in September 1992 with the first sales closed by early October in 1992. The present government approved the long-term strategy on November 7, 1992. This was announced in the Assembly and was tabled on December 3, 1992. After discussion and debate, several changes were made, approved by Cabinet and announced in January, February and March of 1993. The December 16, 1993, Cabinet decision extended another round of sales to tenant employees, added multi-plexes and set a process for MLA consultation about what to do with surplus units, if any, in these communities.
Madam Speaker, the long-term staff housing strategy is a plan which is devised to bring about the government's policy of getting out of staff housing. This strategy was designed to help people become more self-sufficient, promote home ownership, develop private rental housing markets, consolidate staff housing functions and aid the transfers of responsibility for public housing to community control. It is not a policy that has been promulgated in the GNWT policy manual. Many other Government of the Northwest Territories policies are not formal, blue-book type policies.