Thank you, Madam Chair. I have some comments in a couple of areas. I also do have some remarks on the market housing initiative. Let's start with what one of the longest or biggest issues in front of the Housing Corporation is, and that is the pull out of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation as a strategic partner in housing in the NWT. Our Housing Corporation has indicated that this is the first year of the decline in CMHC's program in the North. It's not going to be until 2038 that it will actually be completed, but we've got a major challenge in front of us, Madam Chair, to find a way around the tens of millions of dollars that the federal contribution is worth to us. It's in this light that when we were talking to the department a few weeks ago going over this review, there were some hopeful signals from Prime Minister Paul Martin that the government was going to get back into social housing and into affordable housing programs across the country. Later on I will be asking the Minister if any of that seems to have materialized in the federal budget. That is our most significant and our most severe challenge in the NWT.
I notice from the department, we always get a statistical review and assessment of what's going on out there, and this society, as we all know, is changing awfully fast, Mr. Chair. I was impressed, but perhaps not positively, with a couple of things. For instance, the average family size in the NWT is shrinking rapidly from an average of 3.8 people to 3.1. When you translate that into a housing situation, if that is a trend, then it tells us if we are housing a growing population in the North but the actual size of the family unit is shrinking, we are going to need more individual units. That trend seems to be very well established.
There is a 20 percent increase, we learned, in the number of core need families since 1999; 20 percent. So our whole social services infrastructure, it would seem, despite the alleged prosperity in our economy, our population is getting poorer. The statistical game has to be looked at very, very carefully. I am learning, Madam Chair, not to draw conclusions or make assumptions about what we need to do in the North. There's always another layer, always another consequence to what is going on. We can't take anything for granted. The urbanization of the North, like the rest of Canada, the Housing Corporation has shown that Yellowknife continues to grow. By 15 years from now, the forecast is that 47 percent of the population of the NWT live here. Right now, 45 percent live here. That is the example, if you will, of all other communities in the NWT. The very small communities seem to be, less of the population is living there than 10 or 20 years ago and even in the moderate communities, the moderately-sized communities fewer people are living there.
The Housing Corporation's stated goal here of helping guiding, compelling people to get off the dependency that's been created for so long has to be the right thing to do. Changing and adapting these dependencies, these value systems, the corporation has indicated a 10-year plan. We haven't seen it yet, so I am not going to get into where that's the way to go, but I guess it tells me one thing, Mr. Chairman. The corporation is suggesting we are going to need to take a long-term view of this kind of transition. I would certainly agree with him there. Accelerating ownership opportunities in the communities has to be part of this.
I think this is where I will give a couple of views on the issue that so many of my colleagues have taken up. I think I am getting a much, much better understanding as a Yellowknife MLA of at least some of the realities in the smallest communities, especially when it comes to enabling our professional frontline social services people to be in those communities and that really comes down to the heath care workers and the teachers. So when the Housing Corporation came and told committee about this program, as our report reflects, we were able to give it support, at least in concept and say here is an attempt in a fairly rapid fashion to put housing on the ground in communities and give one more advantage, one more...Let me phrase it this way, try to remove one of the barriers that seems to be there to these professional people living in the smaller communities.
As our report goes on to reflect, I would want to see more of a business case developed for this, at least to make sure that what the Housing Corporation was planning was indeed what the perspective tenants are going to want, are going to need and that the costs are going to be acceptable, affordable for them. Another aspect of the plan that I would really like to see fleshed out is the hope that is expressed by the Housing Corporation that regional aboriginal development corporations are gong to buy these units from the Housing Corporation and then we will really see some local and regional ownership imbedded. That will help turn the corner.
We haven't seen any evidence of a survey or an investigation or a market test, Mr. Chair, that gives me confidence that this idea really has legs, that it's going to work. I guess it doesn't surprise me that, as the Minister indicated awhile ago, the corporation is getting lots of calls from communities and agencies that are interested in jumping on board with this. It would seem natural as long as they are using somebody else's money to get housing on the ground in their communities. As my time winds down, I will leave that as a question to the corporation. What kind of assurances can the Minister bring to the House this evening or what are the plans in place to really nail down this idea that this is an idea that will be taken up by the development corporations? This is going to fulfill the goal of achieving local housing ownership. Have you got any more information that will back that up? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.