Mr. Chairman, I believe I understand what the Member is asking me, but could I just ask him to clarify for me, please?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I understand, Mr. Chairman, that some of the increased costs have to do with the sale of staff housing and the take-up of home ownership units by people who are living in public housing. I understand that that's one of the factors that has driven us to require this increased expenditure. I would just like to ask the Minister, does it cost the government more to provide subsidies for people who are living in private homes, compared to what it would cost if those same people were living in social housing or in government staff housing? I hope I made myself clear.

Mr. Chairman, yes, I understand. Mr. Chairman, when the government has a house and we buy from a community or municipality, we pay the economic rate and we don't go back to MACA and ask for a subsidy. This is where the complexity comes in because when we sell that house to a private home owner and they start to pay their own water bills, then they have a right to go and ask for that particular subsidy. So that costs MACA more, but theoretically, we should be seeing savings in whichever government department is paying for those utilities. We would expect money to lapse

this year in DPW, although we have already made some adjustments in DPW with regard to utilities, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, when there is a brand new house that is put up by an owner who has been to the Housing Corporation and received an access house or something like that, once they start drawing water, the subsidy is brand new and they start drawing that down on Municipal and Community Affairs. It doesn't affect the other departments. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess when I was talking about Housing Corporation units, I should have given the example of a tenant who buys a Housing Corporation unit from the corporation, which I think has happened in a number of communities this year. Would the Minister agree that the proper way to account for this factor of increased sale of staff housing and sale of public housing to tenants would be to offset the increased cost to MACA with a reduced allocation to the Housing Corporation and to the department of Public Works and Services for utilities. Would that not be the best way of giving this House the true picture of what is going on here? Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chairman. That is what we did at the beginning. I think everyone knows that when we started getting out of staff housing and making all of these adjustments, there was some confusion. A lot of the confusion was to do with us because we suddenly realized the impact upon us of these different arrangements that we were making with clients. So, yes, that is the proper way to do it and that is the way we made the adjustments originally in this fiscal year. This is a late adjustment and we are handling one side of the ledger, which is the fact that MACA is going to be short money. We anticipated, as I said earlier, that DPW will lapse money in this area simply because they won't be paying where the customer now is paying, and drawing a subsidy from the Government of the Northwest Territories. So we anticipate the offset to be in the lapse from DPW, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to ask a general question. I think the Minister has admitted that this area in the program is very complicated. I think some of the questions and responses have proven that. I find it very hard to understand the different categories of communities and their various treatment. I believe Yellowknife is in a category all to itself. Perhaps without subsidies, there are settlements and undeveloped areas that have special rates. Then there are hamlets and cities, towns and villages. Would the Minister agree that we have a complicated system that it is almost

incomprehensible for the average person to understand? Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, to know it, you have to live with it. So I would agree that it is difficult for people who are not dealing with it every day to understand what is happening. It is complex, yes.

It seems from this supp, Mr. Chairman, that it might even be hard for the capable officials in the department to understand because they erred by about 20 per cent in what they forecast for the take-up on this subsidy, if my primitive math is correct.

I wonder if the Minister would agree that it would be desirable if the program could be simplified and made more understandable for the average person so we can encourage people to conserve water. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I think that the department has made good progress in the last little while towards simplifying the program. When we first started on it, it was much more difficult to understand than it is now and I think they also realize there can be improvements. I think you'll see, as time goes on, that where there can be improvements and where they're working with communities and getting more efficiencies, that it will be a simpler process in future years. It's going through a big upheaval right now with who is on the system, who's off the system, who is entitled to subsidies and who isn't, so we anticipated there would be problems in the last quarter in this area. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I wouldn't want to embarrass anybody but I guess I will ask this question. We've had sort of an unusual procedure here in the process of considering this supp in that the House was asked to take note of a matter of a possible additional submission to the appropriation act before it had been submitted to the Financial Management Board. I think the Minister of Finance quite properly gave us notice of this and quite properly amended the bill, otherwise I think the department would have been in violation of the Financial Administration Act and subject to a comment by the Auditor General.

I would like to ask the Minister if he would explain how it came about that such a large submission was not included in the bill that was presented to us originally. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs didn't have the numbers and couldn't meet the deadline for the cut-off for the main body of the supplementary appropriation we're dealing with. Consequently, by the time they had the numbers, the request came in late and we couldn't get it into the Standing Committee on Finance. The Minister wanted to be upfront about it and so did I, and that's why we advised the Standing Committee on Finance and this House that there was $1.2 million that hadn't been dealt with. That's why it's being handled in an unusual fashion. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we know that the water and sewer service subsidy policy that was implemented is fairly complex because of the different categories that were developed, but can the Minister tell me the intent of the subsidy policy? Was there an intention for a user-pay concept or was it to subsidize service areas? What was the intent of it?