Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as part of Towards a Better Tomorrow, we stated we were aiming for housing that was adequate, affordable and suitable, and elders who were well supported by their community and able to live independently.
Mr. Speaker, it is my belief that the public housing and income support harmonization initiative does not support either of these stated goals of this government. Residents of public housing make up many of the most vulnerable people in our society; our elders, people on social assistance, and single working parents. These are all people who have little ability to be flexible with their income, yet it is exactly these people that the harmonization program was targeting.
Given the fact that people in public housing are on fixed income, I find it incomprehensible that the government would announce changes to the rent scale system without having completed their own calculations. The uncertainty that was caused by this announcement without the necessary financial information to go with it is inexcusable.
Mr. Speaker, most organizations tend to fully plan and develop an initiative before they stand up and make public statements about it. Most organizations would send a letter directly to the people in this program informing them about how it would affect them. Most organizations would have the decency to inform their elders well in advance of what their rent increase was going to be, not just vaguely tell them that it may increase sometime soon.
According to our Residential Tenancy Act, the government requires that private landlords provide at least three months notice of rent increase. Here, we have a government whose job it is to protect and assist people in public housing and they cannot extend the same courtesy to our own residents.
Mr. Speaker, given the lack of planning and poorly managed job of conveying information to public housing tenants, I would like to recommend that the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation scrap the entire harmonization program and focus on housing issues that would benefit Northwest Territories residents instead of hurting them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
-- Applause