Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Delorey.

I move we report progress.

Thank you, Mr. Delorey. The motion is in order. It's not debatable. We do have a quorum. All those in favour of the motion? All those opposed? The motion is defeated.

---Defeated

I'll go back to Mr. Hawkins. Oh, the question was already posed. I'm sorry. I'll go back to Mr. McLeod.

Madam Chair.

In response to Mr. Hawkins' questions before I recognize Mr. Delorey.

Madam Chair, if I may, could I ask Mr. Hawkins to repeat the question?

Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll just point out I've lost valuable time due to the events that just happened, although I will not ask for it back. I will get straight to the point. Did the Minister engage the community on possible community-driven solutions? Maybe the community wanted the money. Maybe they would create a housing program or they would build houses. A little more engaging. Did the Minister approach the community for their views on this program rather than just buying trailers?

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. McLeod.

Madam Chair, no, we did not approach the community in terms of what are the options for engaging them. We did discuss and did a survey of what the needs are. We did discuss with a number of communities the interest level in purchasing these units. In some cases we did talk to communities about providing them with loan guarantees so they could do some of this stuff themselves, but we didn't sit down with the communities to discuss options of how this could be accommodated.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I notice in your statement you say attracting and retaining much-needed professionals. With the department looking at funding some of these costs -- with the potential of absolutely selling all of these units, of course, but fronting these costs -- did the department consider other alternatives to attracting professionals to these communities, rather than moving trailers to the specific communities and saying that we'll sell them to them at fair market value?

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. I'm wondering if that's within the purview of the Minister of the Housing Corporation what other initiatives were taken to attract professionals to the communities. I don't think that's within the Housing Corporation mandate to recruit and retain teachers and nurses in the community. Would you like to rephrase that question? Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate that, rather than just ruling the question out of order. What consultation did the Minister's staff go into in order to decide that this was the best decision through the housing program of attracting and keeping professionals in the

community? What background work was done? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. McLeod.

Madam Chair, we needed to respond to a need that was in the communities that was being voiced by Members of the 14th Assembly, members of the communities and community leaders, to provide houses in the communities that professionals could rent. I'm repeating myself again, but we did an assessment of what the cost benefit would be in terms of stick built versus trailers. We looked at the best scenario to put lowest rent possible for the units in place, and we wanted to ensure that these units were competitive when it came to reselling. That's the background work that we've done on these units. Our direction was to provide units in the communities at a competitive rate, resale value and full cost recovery and this is what we intend to do.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Minister, would you supply some of that background initiative work that you took under the ministry's wing of research and supply that to the Social Programs committee so we can see what type of background work and maybe some of the results of that fine research that came up with this solution? Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. McLeod.

Madam Chair, I had already committed to do that for Mr. Braden. We'll commit to that for Mr. Hawkins, also for all the committee.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. It appears that question was already asked. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. One last question, which is...Actually, you know what? I'll forego it and go with detail. Thank you very much.

Alright, thank you. The committee is agreed we'll proceed with the detail. If you could refer to page 8-9 under Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, total operations expense, $53.047 million. Mr. Braden.