Page 16, Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, capital, Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, special warrants, $3.605 million. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Could the Minister expand further on the last bullet here? It says, "net affect on government operations will be nil as allocation is fully offset by the recovery from the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation's 1998-1999 operations and maintenance surplus".

The Minister responsible for Finance, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, last year, the Housing Corporation had a surplus in operations and maintenance. They, as I understand it, required capital money in order to do an extension of the Minimum Downpayment Assistance Program. They are not allowed to switch their surplus money in operations and maintenance over to capital. The process they go through is to turn the money back to the Government of the Northwest Territories, and the Government of the Northwest Territories gave it back to them as capital. I could confirm that with the former Minister. Thank you.

Why do we not allow the former Ministers to fend for themselves.

Housing Corporation, special warrant, $3.605 million. Mr. Bell.

Thank you. If the Minister could just give me a little clarification, again, with regarding the details of the program. The concern has been brought to me by some of my constituents that, although the Minimum Downpayment Assistance Program was well meaning and well intentioned, that in some instances southern residents were able to buy homes in the Northwest Territories and utilize them as revenue properties. Now, while I understand we may have wanted to encourage southern residents to purchase homes here with the idea of relocating, if relocation was not in their plans, was it possible for southerners to buy homes essentially as revenue properties? Thank you, Mr. Minister.

Thank you. The Minister responsible for Finance, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, a basic condition of the program was that it had to be the individual's primary residence. There was no question about that at all.

For anyone to follow the policy and guidelines on this program, they would have to live in the house. If the Member knows of a situation where someone has bought a house with assistance from this program and is using it as a rental property, or some other purpose and living somewhere else, we would be very interested in knowing about it.

There is also a minimum time period in which people had to live in the house before they could turn it over. You could not buy it one month and two months later turn it over to someone else, or sell it again and take advantage of the money.

We would be interested if anyone is working around the rules. I suspect there may have been some.

The Member for Yellowknife South, Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. I know there was a review done with the program. While we may want to look to see if there is anybody trying to work around the rules, do we now track any of those purchases? Have we done any follow up to ensure the rules are being adhered to? Is that part of the review process? Thank you.

The Minister responsible for Finance, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, I do not know exactly what the Housing Corporation is doing. They do have the capacity, through the Corporation itself and their housing associations, to be tracking and monitoring all of the various programs they operate. I expect they are monitoring this one to ensure people are complying with the guidelines.

As we said yesterday, we would be very happy to make available to the Members the evaluation that was done of this program. Thank you.

We are on page 16, Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, capital, Northwest Territories Housing Corporation special warrant, $3,605,000. Mr. Delorey

Could the Minister tell me if he knows of any situation where the minimum downpayment was used to purchase a house and then, through negotiations with certain things happening where that minimum downpayment was applied to two different people but to the same house?

Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, I am not aware of any situations like that. I did hear stories about people doing that at one time, just on the street. If there is any information that is available on those kind of circumstances, I am sure the Housing Corporation would be more than happy to check it out.

Mr. Delorey.

Thank you Mr. Chairman. Are you saying there could still be an avenue open to investigate that type of a situation if one is suspected to exist?

Mr. Handley.

Yes, certainly there would be.

We are dealing with Housing Corporation, special warrant, $3,605,00.