Mr. Chairman, in the year 2000, the NWT Housing Corporation did a needs survey and since then, has been flogging affordability. However, in the majority of the communities in the North, affordability was not brought up as an issue, yet that seems to be a big issue for the NWT Housing Corporation.

It concerns me where this is leading us. It concerns me by discussions that I hear happening in this House as to the trends that we are starting to develop. We no longer recognize market disruption. We are starting to fund projects in the larger centres that we never funded before.

At the same time, the smaller communities have been stating over and over that they do not have enough houses. Maybe we should be looking at the adequacy of units in the smaller communities. There are many units that were built over the years that should never have passed inspection. Units that were built under the HAP program, the SHAG program.

We heard one of the Minister's staff say that the EDAP program spends money on repairs. At the same time, you failed to say that there is a policy that does not allow the NWT Housing Corporation to spend EDAP dollars, or any repair dollars, on any units that were built by the NWT Housing Corporation. Ninety-five percent of the houses in our communities were built by the NWT Housing Corporation. It is not a real fair picture that we are seeing here.

I think we should be talking about the lack of units in our communities. How many have no running water? How many need repairs? How many passed inspection? I am not sure how. I have units that do not have insulation in the floors, no insulation in the ceilings, units where the ceilings are full of bats. However, we do not get that attention and we do not seem to have programs to address it.

I would like to ask if that could be something that we could look at, the NWT Housing Corporation to look at. If they could tell me that from now on, affordability is going to be the priority. Is the Housing Corporation as we know it going to start changing their investment plans?

We know the dollars are shrinking. However, as we open up the investment portfolio, so to speak and go into Yellowknife, Inuvik, Hay River and Fort Smith where there is a market, where there are developers, then we are not going to see a change in our smaller communities.

My question is will we see some focus in the small communities rather than the larger centres?