Mr. Speaker, the income support program has certain criteria for individuals. The Housing Corporation did not have those same criteria, criteria that need to be applied when people apply to get into public housing. We wanted to harmonize that to ensure that we use consistently the same criteria for those who are on income support and those who are in public housing. Mr. Speaker, today, in public housing we have some individuals who earn high incomes. Is that appropriate? Mr. Speaker, that is the issue that we are trying to address here with harmonization to ensure there are criteria in place and that in the long run we have individuals in public housing that deserve to be in public housing. Those high income individuals are not paying appropriate rent at the present time, Mr. Speaker. So we needed to address that particular issue. That is the purpose of harmonizing, so that programs run by income support are there already, have been there all along, we have consistent application of that. However, in the housing area, we did not have the same criteria to assess how individuals would apply for public housing. We needed to ensure that was in place, Mr. Speaker, to ensure those individuals that apply for public housing meet the criteria to be in those houses, Mr. Speaker.
Jake Ootes on Question 153-14(6): GNWT Harmonization Strategy
In the Legislative Assembly on March 4th, 2003. See this statement in context.
Further Return To Question 153-14(6): GNWT Harmonization Strategy
Question 153-14(6): GNWT Harmonization Strategy
Item 6: Oral Questions
March 3rd, 2003
Page 486
See context to find out what was said next.