Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to talk about the housing needs in the Sahtu. When I did my campaigning and when I went around on two tours with several of the Ministers, the housing needs in the Sahtu were a high priority. When I am reading the Minister's opening comments, and listening to him, trying to figure out what the process will be, I think the end goal of this whole issue that I would like to see is to instil pride into our people because I know what it is like to live in low-cost housing. I lived in low-cost for a while and when I got out of low-cost housing and built my own home, a lot of pride went into that house. Also, my lack of understanding and my ignorance in how to look after a house, because I have always lived in a house that was provided by the Housing Corporation and it is new for us to get into our own housing.
In the proposed initiatives by the Housing Corporation, I hope they help us out in terms of letting families know what it is like to own a house and be committed to keeping the house. I hope that the initiative goes forward. I am hearing also about the other regions and what it means to them. What I wanted to say to the Housing Corporation is that people in the communities are my first priority, in terms of housing and their needs for housing. How we go about it, that will be a secondary issue for me, and I always support northern business and if they can do something to keep the business in the North it is a third priority. However, having people in the communities make sure that they have houses, and having houses for the professionals, and homeownerships, and selling some of the private units to our people, we should almost have a program like on TV. On TV they have Trading Places, use a house for a while and you come back and they have fixed up your house, something like that. I have thought about that for a while, but it is probably not going to be in this lifetime.
What I want to say, Mr. Chairman, is that the way that housing has been in the Sahtu is that there are several units in Deline that are sitting empty, and I think a lot of people could use them, but they need the means and the support to get into those units, and I hope housing will help them in this initiative.
The one area that I would like to ask the Minister and his officials about is some of the older people who are considered elders are living in small units, and sometimes they have a hard time managing their houses because of the high cost of fuel, electricity or maintenance. They have a hard time with their pension cheques, and at the end of the day it doesn't leave them much money in terms of buying food or other things that they would like. A lot of their money goes to other costs. I want to ask the Minister, with my ignorance on some of the programs, is that some of the elders are asking for housing in terms of taking care of their homes with the amount of money that they are getting from their pension cheques. Thank you.