Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the rent scale, I guess the Minister would be quite knowledgeable on the rent scale and know that it has taken, in the past, millions of dollars and years of work to develop a rent scale for the whole Northwest Territories. What drove that was the ability for the Housing Corporation to shift its program. In the past, the Housing Corporation had pretty well 90 percent of its program as rental housing, ten percent of this program was home ownership. Now 100 percent of this program is home ownership with very little, if any, capital going into rental. The reason for that shift was a cost to government and people wanting to become more independent. Also, what was discovered at that time was that a lot of times elders are being abused by people and were getting stuck holding the bill. At that time, the government of the day made the decision that elders would not pay rent in public housing units. Any people living with the elders that were wage earners would pay rent directly to the Housing Authority, but not through the elder, so you did not put that hardship on them. Will the Minister assure me that this government and your department or your Housing Corporation is not looking at again charging rent to our elders and that you will leave that program in place?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I hope harmonizing does not mean increased rent for elders. Will the Minister assure me that there will not be an increase in rent for the elders?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. All Members will be informed of changes. Will there be consultation or will we just be informed that this is happening?

Thank you. Yes, it is so important, and I know the Minister does understand, and the president does as well, that there is a drastic difference in places like Hay River, Fort Smith, Yellowknife, and major communities. There is a big difference compared to communities like Fort Resolution, Lutselk'e, especially Lutselk'e being off the highway and the cost of living is so expensive. I have confidence in the Minister's ability, as well as the president, to look at those costs to ensure that they are taken into consideration. Anything that is done should be done slowly, the same way that it was implemented, It should be done slowly.

I just want to switch to the manufacturing and the selling of houses that they do. I know that people have phoned manufacturing companies in the west where they would expect to supply and manufacture goods from the west on Nunavut buildings and they are instructed to, through the contractor, get it with instructions to buy out of Winnipeg or buy out of southern Canada before you buy off the Western Territory. It is that old thing, I guess, that happens all the time, but how much longer is it going to be before you come up with a manufacturing policy that we do have the Business Incentive Policy to manufacture? It stipulates, I believe, 25 percent. If you manufacture in the north, you bid on the Northwest Territories contract, you use a Northwest Territories product, you allow 25 percent over and above, I believe it is, southern Canada. That only assists businesses that are doing business with the government, but nothing assists business that are doing business with the federal government or with private sector or with the Nunavut Government, Yukon or any place, including Alaska or anything because there is no incentive to, for our manufactured product, to be supplied because they do not get that benefit.

Will the Minister look at actually giving or developing with his counterparts, I know it has to be done with other Ministers, a manufacturing policy that would put our manufacturers on equal footing to southern Canada? You could do that by a direct policy that would give a manufacturer a subsidy instead of doing it through BIP or whatever, where if you manufacture a fibreglass tank and it costs you one dollar to manufacture it, then you will receive, from this government with proven receipts that you manufacture in the north, you will receive 25 cents for every dollar you spent type thing, then they can go out and market their own.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. I did not have any more questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Further to the questions I had asked earlier about senior citizens' care facilities and independent housing, the Minister had indicated that the independent housing for this year has not been allocated yet. What I was wondering was, is it possible for a community that has allocated the independent housing to use that money that has been indicated for the independent housing instead for Level II or Level III facilities?