Stephen Kakfwi Sahtu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will take the question as notice. Thank you.

Floyd Roland Inuvik

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the MDAPP program had a number of objectives it set out to try and meet. One is to stimulate the economy through housing sales, one is to have families move to communities that have jobs and have people working from southern Canada move to the North and establish their homes. As well, part of the program freed up some of the public housing units that right now have families in them with a higher income levels. They were able to use the program to purchase their own home, move into their own home thereby freeing up some of the public housing units. As well, with that I should state that the majority of the uptake on this was in the larger communities, so that had an impact as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Jane Groenewegen Hay River

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister stated that one of the goals was to have people from southern Canada take up residency in the Northwest Territories, that was one of the stated objectives of the program. Could the Minister tell me how many homes were purchased from people outside of the Northwest Territories?

Floyd Roland Inuvik

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe I heard the question right, how many homes were purchased from people outside of the Northwest Territories. I do not have that information available. I do not believe we have had people selling houses that do not live in the Northwest Territories. I do not know if there were people who had homes that left prior to this program coming up and then having their homes sold on the market. We could go back and find that out, but I think we were asked on the objectives of this program and we have compared on a questionnaire that went out to a lot of the people that took advantage of the program and they supplied information, but the questions on that were not related to who was out of the Territories when they sold their homes. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Jane Groenewegen Hay River

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess I did not make that question clear enough. Part of the objectives of the MDAPP program were to encourage people to take up permanent residency in the Northwest Territories and to purchase homes here. How many of those 555 families, even approximately, just give us a ballpark figure, were related to that particular objective? Thank you.

Floyd Roland Inuvik

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you for that clarification. I misunderstood your earlier question. From the questionnaire, the information that they received, they were able to extrapolate that approximately 22 percent of those that used the MDAPP program moved from southern Canada into the Northwest Territories within the last two years. Thank you.