Thank you, Mr. Speaker. During our last two-week break in our constituencies, I met with the subcommittee of the Hay River Seniors' Society on Tuesday, March 5th. The subject discussed is the apparent unfairness in the cost of accommodation between seniors living in public housing and seniors living in their own homes.

The conclusion of this committee is that a way should be found to equalize this disparity. This would require Hay River to propose an alternative outside of the existing housing policy rent scale administered by the NWT Housing Corporation. Rather than approaching a funding source to obtain money to hire a consultant, I suggested to the committee that the resources to make such a proposal to the Minister are probably available within the existing public service in the social envelope.

They would like the proposal to include, but not necessarily be limited, to some of the following components: comparisons between how much the government presently subsidizes seniors in public units versus how much subsidy and assistance is provided to seniors in their own homes using information which could be obtained from various seniors in the case of those in their own homes, and from

the housing authority in the case of seniors living in the housing units.

They would like to develop proposed maximum and minimum amounts that seniors could pay for accommodation based on their income; a proposed range of types and size of housing units which would be considered as a standard or adequate for singles or couples; identifying how much Hay River presently receives as a community in the area of support to seniors to assist in devising a more fair and even distribution of these resources.

A comparison between the proposed cost of assisting seniors to remain in their own homes versus the cost that the government currently pays for other levels of care for seniors in homes and hospitals. It was the feeling of the group that while free housing for all seniors may be warranted in the smaller, more remote communities, the policy in place at this time is too global. It does not take into account communities such as Hay River where the government could not possibly afford to house all seniors free of charge regardless of income, but the policy still benefits a few to the maximum and leaves many others with next to no support.

It is our hope that someone could be identified to assist with this proposal for the Hay River Seniors' Society and in question period, I will be asking the Minister of Housing to respond to that request. Thank you.