Thank you, Madam Chair. I do not want to confuse the issue here, and I will try to explain it as well and as briefly as I can. The financing or the cost of building by plans will be put up by the winning proponent and the cost of the lease cost will be paid back to the proponent from the monies that are brought in from consumers who are purchasing the fuel so there will be no upfront money from the government.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think what I neglected to mention was that the petroleum products revolving fund is voted in or put through this House, I believe, as an information item, because the money in the fund is one where it is used to build capital such as tank farms and pipelines and as leases or the monies come in are put back and used again. So, it is a revolving fund and as I believe that the details of the revolving fund are not ones that are normally voted on in the House. I could be mistaken.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think it is important to point out once again the difference between an RFP and a tender. We are issuing an RFP for the building of pipelines that will enable us to probably go for public tender on the delivery of fuel. So, those are two different things and the reason why we are going for a request for proposals is because we know as the Premier explained yesterday we know what it is we want, a pipeline, but we do not have all the information on how to get it. There are other issues on location about the type of pipes, about the length because of the different terrains. Environmental issues we need to deal with. So, that is the reason why we are going on with the request for proposals and not a public tender. But I would fully expect that once all the information is known on how to get fuel into the region, that it will go through the public tender process.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to leave fuel alone for a few minutes. The Minister introduced Plan 2000 some months ago, and Mr. Picco asked some questions about it. In the Minister's comments I noticed twice that he used the words "crisis" in the current housing situation in the Northwest Territories. The Minister had answered a question and I did not quite understand whether he said there were 600 new homes added this year in response to Mr. Picco, or 600 families were housed. When I look at the population statistics and the census results for 1996, I noticed that the number of occupants per home in Canada is 2.65 and in the Northwest Territories it is 3.39. If I break those down further into Nunavut and the west, Nunavut has 3.39 persons per dwelling and the west had 3.12. Is this a poor choice of words on the Minister's part "crisis" or is there something that we are not getting from these numbers? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First on the new homes, there were over 600 families that we assisted additionally with Plan 2000, and I believe there were close to 340 new homes built as a result of that. The others were extensive renovations, et cetera. If you compare 2.6 persons per household and 3.39 it does not seem like a big difference, but I think you have to really look at who the people are that you are counting. In communities all over the Arctic we have, percentage wise, dangerously high numbers of very young people, fifteen years and under. The figure you raised, I think, is a little misleading. We have still many households that are over crowded. There is I think, a very urgent need to build new social housing. It is something that we are trying to pursue with the federal Ministers, but I believe very much and I think the two previous housing Ministers would agree with me, unless things change, unless we can convince the federal government to build new social housing that there is in fact a housing crisis looming. It is very important that we try to do something about it, and I do not think it is an exaggeration or over estimation. Unless we do something there is very much a housing crisis on our door step in every sense of the word.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Minister talked about and I quote "many homes over crowded" if he could put some numbers to that it may help me understand the situation a little better and too many of these homes are over crowded, the number of family members in them. Following on, I believe it is fair to say that you pay a premium in construction for constructing single family homes. Has the Housing Corporation looked at building apartment units even in the smaller communities where the Minister has identified as needing accommodation? If he has, what is the savings that could be realized? I mean, we realize we are short of financial resources to deal with the housing requirements that the Minister through the corporation have identified. So what consideration have they given to building apartments to assist. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Our last survey said there are 4,500 or so families in core need for housing in the Northwest Territories. That figure, I very much expect and all the experts say, will be rising dramatically. As far as single family homes go, the Member is quite correct that the in terms of economy of scale, single family homes are much more expensive than apartment units. Apartment units in the communities are, I think, one that the leaders in the communities might find a bit undesirable. Previous governments have built multiplexes in the past. I think it is certainly something that the Housing Corporation senior staff and myself have been thinking out loud about.

I believe that it is time that we look at this very seriously. We do not want to get in the situation of the warehouse type huge apartment complexes that you see in some of the former communist countries and so forth, but we do need to get better economies of scale in this exactly because of the amount of money we have.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It has now been a few months since the Housing Corporation Plan 2000 was announced here in the House. I am wondering if the corporation has received any feedback from the public on it. From this feedback, would you provide an overview as to what the general public is saying about this initiative. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe the Member was asking about the Plan 2000? Yes. We have had enthusiastic response from interested parties, families, about this initiative. We have more clients than we can possibly deal with in a year. But there are some difficulties, I think with clients who have never had dealings with banks because Plan 2000 requires you to deal with banks. It requires you to have good credit rating et cetera and that is for many northerners an area that might be a difficulty. There are always improvements I think that we can make on the project.

But generally, it has been successful. We are achieving what we set out to achieve, to help more families. Thank you.