Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Minister identified some points as to the advantages of amalgamation. One would be meeting the needs of clients and he had replied, the communities as being on the receiving end of some of these programs. Therefore, I suppose they would be considered as clients.
It has been my observation that there is a fair amount of reluctance on the part of the hamlets to take on the housing association responsibilities. Therefore, I do not know how amalgamation would benefit in this regard. The communities, in my riding anyway, seem to prefer housing to remain separate from the hamlet responsibilities. Part of that, I know, is because both programs, hamlets and housing, are fairly large programs in the communities with a fair amount of staff. There are also the social aspects of housing versus the municipal responsibilities of the hamlet and there is definitely a reluctance on the part of hamlets to take on the responsibilities of the housing associations, and social programs attached to those responsibilities. I know that, the housing associations themselves have a fairly substantial job just keeping up with the maintenance of these house and I am sure that the hamlet councils bear this in mind when they make their decisions.
At this point in time I am only aware of the Hamlet of Holman Island taking on the housing association, or considering it. I believe they have not taken it on yet. But the reluctance on their part is tied in with the problems of collection of rents and all the responsibilities of collection of rents and I suppose along with collecting of rent, evicting people if they do not pay. Obviously, it is not good for politicians to start evicting people. All these types of things are being viewed by the hamlets.
Now, as well, there is a similarity between the responsibilities of the DPW to housing in that they both maintain buildings and property. There is not as much similarity to that in regards to maintenance of airports. There is a tendency for hamlets to basically operate airports sort of separately, the same way that the territorial government has done it. One of the things that calls for this type of planning and operation is the fact that airport has specialized equipment and a lot of hamlets are recognizing and realizing that this equipment should be strictly limited to maintenance of airports so as to assure that type of equipment is available when needed, because airports in the small communities in the Arctic are very critical as a supply line into the community.
I think that hamlet and community housing associations, would tend to prefer to deal with separate departments, rather than one department which would address all three. Obviously, whoever they are talking to, whether it is the superintendent level or higher, they would want to know that the guy has the background of concern that they have. For instance, if it is a housing concern, I am sure they would prefer that the regional superintendent had a housing background. If it was a transportation problem in airports, then they would prefer that the guy know what he is talking about when the Hamlet addressed the airport concerns. Therefore, I think overall the thought of one department simplifying a one-shot deal to have access to one department for these problems, in reality it is not as easy to put into effect as it may be on paper.
Another concern that I have, there is a lot of emphasis being put by the Ministries on the downsizing of these departments in order to turn them into one effective department. A lot of this is going to end up in privatization of certain parts of those services and programs. For instance, the engineering aspects may end up to be totally consulting engineers. We are suggesting here that we are going to lay off X number of engineers to stream down the size of the departments and if needed we would hire them back as consultants. That is happening already. There are many people that I know of that were working for this government a few years ago, or a year ago, are now in the consulting business. They are charging the government twice as much as they were getting in salaries. You cannot help wondering whether downsizing is actually being effective in reducing the cost. May I continue, Mr. Chairman?