Yes, Mr. Chairman, with my honourable colleague, Mr. Dent, who was the co-sponsor of this additional resource, of course. If I may qualify, there are some fiscal limitations that I have to operate under and, of course, there is no pot of gold, as we would all like, at the end of the rainbow, Mr. Chairman. There were some limitations to what we have to do and where we had to assign it. We looked very closely at where monies were being spent, what the value of the food basket was in some of the communities. Mr. Dent's department is working to try to make the appropriate adjustments. Based on what I felt we had in the budget, I assigned $1 million to that particular policy initiative with the hope that it would provide some assistance to those most in need. Now, a common concern would be, why did you not provide more? The reality is that, I think I said earlier on, and Mr. Dent said the same thing, in an ideal world we would like to be able to do that, but this is not an ideal world. We are working under still very difficult fiscal conditions. This was a number that we felt we could live with. I felt we could fiscally manage. In some small way both Mr. Dent and myself felt that this would provide some assistance to those most in need, not perfect by any means. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I suppose the Minister is saying then that the $1 million is an arbitrary amount brought forward because of the lack of monies available. The whole idea behind having an increase in the food allowance, Mr. Chairman, is that nutritional food is critical to disease prevention, healthy development and children's school performance. That is a direct quote, Mr. Chairman, out of Mr. Todd's own budget address. We have been able to find money for other things in this government which have been recommended for, and against in this House. For example, it was recommended not to do a POL study. We spent a quarter of a million dollars on it. We have another study from this government called the Med-Emerg Report which was $750,000 that has been slam-dunked and put on a shelf and forgotten except for two recommendations. Two hundred and fifty thousand and 250, to me makes up another $1 million. So, I would like some type of commitment from the Minister today that he would again look at and readdress the $1 million put into income support. If we were going to say something, let us demonstrate it with me. I know the Minister, as he said, only had $1 million but it seems like we can always find other monies from other places for schemes, or programs or ideas that Cabinet, or the Executive or the government as a whole comes up with. I would ask the Minister would he again, hopefully, if there is some slippage in some areas that he would try to rebase the income food allowance support by more than $1 million?

Well, I concur with my honourable colleague that in the current situation of those who are less well off, you would like to be able to provide the dollars in an ideal world that would make life a little better for them. We, Mr. Dent and myself, felt that this was a start not necessarily an end, that the department statistics that they are currently working on trying to determine costs in every community. Quite frankly, I would suggest to you that if there was the capability down the road, if our fiscal framework gets in order and if there is an ability to move monies into areas of those in most need, of which I have been an advocate since I started in this job -- and the budgets have reflected that if one carefully analyses not only where the cuts went, but where the spending has gone -- we will do that. It is unfortunate that in tough, difficult times you cannot necessarily answer all the fiscal requirements of your constituency. But I think this is a start. It is clearly a recognition by the government, by Mr. Dent's department, that something has to be done, as we indicated in the speech, nothing has been done since 1992.

I think it is also important to point out that the NWT child benefit will also assist the poor, in which my honourable colleague had a significant role. It was his comments many months ago that raised the concern about low income families and was this government prepared to be sensitive to some policy changes and we responded. I applaud him for his efforts in raising the profile of the NWT child benefit need. Between the Child Benefit Program we have put in place, the additional $2 million we added to the federal commitment, along with the million dollars in the food basket, I think in some small way this will assist those who are less fortunate in our constituencies and certainly my honourable colleague, Mr. Dent, has made it clear to me that he would be only too pleased to do more and he is studying that at this time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I thank the Minister for his accolades and I also thank the Minister for his commitment to review the amount if fiscal priorities change so that he may be able to rebase it. I would look forward to that and I will be watching it. My second question today on the Budget Address concerns the need to address social housing. The new scheme that has been presented in the budget address is trying to put more people into homeownership. Over the past several months I have been bringing out concerns now that, indeed, we have almost saturated the marketplace with people who actually can afford to sustain a mortgage, but nowhere, Mr. Chairman, nowhere have we looked at addressing the need for new social housing. Now, I had addressed this concern in a letter to the Housing Minister

several months ago where I actually came up with, I thought, a good idea to look at the building of new social housing.

I am wondering now when the Minister put together his budget address, how come he did not tackle the issue of new social housing? I do not want to keep hearing that the federal government backed out of it four years ago. We are able to fund other things under the P3 Program. Is there a way, for example, that the Minister for Housing, the Minister of Finance, can say to a private developer we need 30 new social housing units, 2 or 3 bedroom apartments. We will be leasing these from you and doing the same type of deal that he is doing with the P3 for other corporate structures? There must be a way, Mr. Chairman, that we can get people in need into social housing. When we look at the need for housing, Mr. Todd just talked about, of those 4,500 that are needed, I understand that 80 percent of those houses are in the social program area. They are social housing. They are not private housing. What are we going to do about that? Yes, thank you, Mr. Miltenberger, the majority of them are in the east. I thank you for that Mr. Miltenberger. So, that is my question for the Minister, why did he not address it? Is he going to address it? With his fiscal abilities to come up with these wonderful ideas of tax credits, the Aurora Fund and all these other wonderful things, I am sure he could come up with an idea to build new social housing. Then, we can say he was a man.

If life was as easy as Mr. Picco so frequently implies on the other side. Of course, this is the same Member that wanted me to cut the budget and deficit in one year rather than the two that it took us. Can I answer the question or not, Mr, Chairman?

Whether my honourable colleague likes it or not, I live in the world of fiscal pragmatic reality and the federal government has a fiscal and fiduciary responsibility to aboriginal people in the providing of social housing. I have a $12 million surplus. Where would my colleague like me to take the $200 million I need to build the social housing needs of the people in the Northwest Territories? We simply do not have the fiscal capability, neither are we responsible for it. The federal government has the responsibility. They cut the budget $43, $45 million four or five years ago. My honourable colleague, Mr. Arlooktoo, has spent months trying to negotiate with our federal colleagues in an effort to try to find the kinds of social housing funds that are required to meet the legitimate concerns that my colleague raises. We are trying, and it is not a perfect solution, but this is not a perfect world. We are trying through this initiative of trying to move people out of social housing, who have the capability to service a mortgage out of the social housing so we can put the people who are desperate for social housing into social housing.

It is only a small measure I agree, it is only a small measure, but it is one small measure that we have to take. On the other hand, some people are accessing private developers. It is happening in my honourable colleague's riding where social income support clients are using a developer's facilities, of course, that comes out of my honourable colleague, Mr. Dent's budget, so in the end it costs the government. We are working hard to try to find some solutions. We are still negotiating hard with our federal counterparts. I think it would be fair to say that we were disappointed that the Royal Commission did not explicitly, as my colleague here says, identify social housing for the Northwest Territories like it identified for on-reserve Indian bands. There was some disappointment there. But the reality is, Mr. Chairman, that the fiscal resources nor the responsibility is simply not there. Now that is not to say that we should not be trying to make some constructive effort to look at creative ways in which to do it. I think that is what we are trying to do. I think we are trying very hard to do that but is not a simple case of realigning resources that we do not have. So, in conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I would say to my colleague that while our initiatives are not perfect, they are a small way of trying to make some minor dent in a very difficult issue. Discussions are still underway with our federal counterparts as to their responsibility and we are going to continue, myself, Mr. Arlooktoo and Mr. Dent, to look at new and creative ways where we can find some way to alleviate the difficult housing shortage we have on the social housing side. Thank you.

Agreed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, yes.

Agreed.

Would the Sergeant-at-Arms bring in the witnesses? Thank you. For the record, Mr. Morin, would you like to introduce your witness?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dave Waddell, director of corporate services. Mr. Chairman, I also have two answers from yesterday.

I had two answers to questions from yesterday. I promised to give those answers today.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Response to a question regarding two public utility boards. It is currently proposed that there will be two separate public utility boards established as a result of the creation of two new territories, one for the Western Territory and one for the Nunavut Territory. These boards would form a single panel, when necessary, to address issues surrounding the NWT Power Corporation that affect both territories. Thank you.

As well, vacant positions on the Department of the Executive, the following eight positions are currently vacant within the Executive: Commissioner's office; executive assistant, it is staffed with a casual; regulatory reform, project specialist, staffing is pending; corporate services, data entry and admin clerk, staffing pending; corporate services, director's secretary, staffing pending; Cabinet Secretariat, YK policy advisor, staffing pending; Cabinet Secretariat, Iqaluit, director of corporate affairs, staffing pending; Personnel Secretariat, senior manager on hold; Personnel Secretariat, officer on hold. Once we have the recommendations of the senior management committee, we will staff those last two positions. Thank you.