Thank you, Madam Chair. It still concerns me because 30 percent can be quite high. People who live in social housing, taking a street perspective, folks in social housing don't make a lot of money. They have heavy burdens and difficult circumstances or, as I say from a street perspective, they wouldn't be in social housing if they didn't have troubles with income and meeting basic obligations. That's why we have a social housing program. I still find this a difficult challenge of interpretation. I caution the Minister proceeding with this program until it's maybe thoroughly thought out or maybe expressed and articulated in a document to all Members of the House. I am uncomfortable with the thought that we have people on the higher end of the rent scale paying 30 percent. The way I see it you probably don't make very much money to be in social housing. I can't imagine a person who is even paying 30 percent in social housing being able to make a normal mortgage payment on top of that. That 30 percent, as I understand it, includes a lot of things to be in that house.

So when will the Minister have a detailed plan on how this will work? When will it come with some examples on the types of people that this will apply to? I am referring to brackets money-wise. I really don't want to see the Housing Corporation back these things, underwrite them, subsidize them and then we put people in a failing position where they have a difficult time making the mortgage payments and then what do we do? The loan gets called on the Housing Corporation and we end up with another Somba K'e Healing Centre, but what happens is we end up with another 450 of these things around the North.

So I really caution the Minister. It's ambitious. I do recognize it's a new initiative. I welcome out-of-the box thinking. I just want it thought out a little more and him to inspire us with his project. Long before he proceeds, I would like to see a formalized plan in front of the House to prove to all Members this isn't going to fail, because I don't want to see the Assembly straddled with another 450 mortgages. If we are looking at that potential trouble, let's just give the houses to the darn people and make sure that they aren't being put into positions or burdens over their head. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Would you like to respond to that, Mr. Minister?

Yes, Madam Chair, I would like to respond. We do already provide loan guarantees. We have a history of providing loan guarantees for people to access their own homes. We have, to date, provided 44 loan guarantees to people across the North and we have so far had only four defaults. I think that's a good success rate. We have provided a number of corporate loan guarantees and we've had no defaults at all so far. That program is working quite well. We've done 525 EDAP units and out of 525, we've had 18 defaults. So that's not as bleak as the picture the Member is painting. For people to purchase their own units, we need to look at the aspect of homeownership more seriously. The decline of social housing dollars is becoming a real serious factor. The year 2006 will see us really struggling to replace social housing units. We have to decrease our stock. We also have to renew a number of units and we have to look at ways we can do that. With the potential to have no social housing by 2038, I think we will have serious problems. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am going to weigh in on this tender for the 22 units, if I could, Madam Chair. The longer I spend in this Assembly, the more I realize some of the bad decisions the last government made. This one looks to me to be obviously one of those decisions. I do believe that the government of the day, the fellows across from us, have the ability to put the brakes on this tender that is out there. I know in my riding of Kam Lake and elsewhere, Hay River, I know they have manufacturing there. We have a fledgling manufacturing industry here in the Northwest Territories. By waiving the BIP on this, it's not the right thing to do. I think we have to give the manufacturing industry here in the Northwest Territories at least a fighting chance. None of the manufacturers here in the Northwest Territories have the deep pockets necessary to try to get this done the way it's set up today. I know they can be put together either in Hay River or Yellowknife, sent into the communities, finished and at the same time, that would supply some work to the local communities that the units show up in.

I am learning more about this as I go along, but how the government can pick and choose when to waive the BIP and when not to, I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Delorey on this. Either you have a policy or you don't. Either you support northern manufacturing or you don't. By doing this, it's obvious to me and obvious to the public that the Government of the Northwest Territories does not support the manufacturing industry in the Northwest Territories. Believe me, there are companies here who could do this. They are just not being given the chance, Madam Chair.

I want to ask a question to the Minister, Madam Chair. I am not sure if the Minister can answer this question or the Premier might be able to. How do we put the brakes on this tender and how do we right the decision of the last government if it was a decision of the last government? We still haven't got to that. Mr. Delorey has asked for a date the decision was made to waive the BIP on this and we haven't got that answer yet. So we haven't really come to the conclusion of whether or not the decision was definitely that of the last government. Please, how can we put the brakes on this? How can we get northern manufacturers involved in putting these units into these communities and getting some people to work in the Northwest Territories? To me, it's unfathomable what we are doing here. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Madam Chair. At this point, if we were not to proceed, we would still be stuck with the issue of not having any accommodation in the market areas in the communities. The question is how do we accommodate it. We've come forward with an initiative that would be able to meet, at least partially, the demands in the communities and the requests of the community members in the smaller non-market communities. Whether this can be stopped, I am sure there is a methodology of bringing this process to a stop. I am not willing to bring that forward at this point. I would have to be convinced that there is a cheaper, better way to do it. There is a demand out there from all the small communities. We are trying to accommodate that. So I don't know if that answers the question, but I would certainly have to indicate to Mr. Ramsay that it's an initiative I support and I would like to see it go forward.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess that's a decision the government is going to have to make, whether it's more beneficial to save some money in order to get the units into the communities and, in essence, sink what little manufacturing we have in the Northwest Territories. They could surely use some of this work. I know I have a plant in Kam Lake that could handle this job. I wish we could at least buy another week or two on this because these guys are getting cut out of the whole thing. It's just not right. My recommendation to the Premier and to the Minister would be just to put the brakes on this. Let our guys get together and see what they can do. The jobs will stay in the North, the money will stay in the North. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The process is open and allows anybody to bid on it who is interested. Mr. Ramsay is quite right, it's a decision whether we will be able to accommodate the desires from the smaller, non-market communities to deal with the issues of people in professional positions or bringing people in to assist with capacity building. Our time frame right now hasn't allowed us to deal with the value-added, built-in-the-North issue. We can certainly consider it, but it has to be a full cost recovery. It has to be affordable rent rates and it has to have a resale value once it hits the community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I heard the Premier across the way mention let them bid on it. To the Premier, put the BIP in there so they can compete. These manufacturers in the Northwest Territories don't have the deep pockets that some of these guys from southern Canada, Alberta and British Columbia that will bid on this tender do. They don't. By waiving the BIP on this, we are cutting them out of the whole process. Put the BIP in, and they will bid on it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. McLeod.

Madam Chair, the whole idea behind this concept of waiving the BIP was to get the cheapest rates possible. We are not eliminating the people who are interested in providing these units. The process is open. There is a lot of interest. I don't think putting the BIP back into this will serve the purpose we are trying to achieve by removing any potential increased costs. It may put us in a position where we are not able to do this whole thing, it's not something I can say with complete confidence at this point. But I think we have to realize that this is, from our standpoint, the cheapest way to move forward and provide units to the communities.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't really have anything else to add. I just think we are doing the wrong thing with this. Any chance we get to keep the business in the North and to allow our northern

manufacturers the business and maybe put some jobs in at the community level, I think we have to take that. That's what the communities are crying for. That's what our northern manufacturing sector is crying for, and here we are flying in the face of all of that by waiving the BIP on this. It will go to a southern firm and the northern manufacturing industry will suffer as a result. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. I will take that as a comment. I don't anticipate you require the Minister to reiterate his position on this. Next I have Mr. Braden.

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.

Thanks, Mr. Braden. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A number of issues were covered here. I would certainly be glad to provide -- we don't have it here -- the results of our needs survey and some of the assessments in the communities and some of our own documents. We did talk to the communities. I said a couple of times to the

boards, agencies and organizations and they have all expressed concern about the availability of houses. We did an assessment of the rent scales or the potential amounts that we would be charging in the different communities, we did it by community, and we also compared it best-case and worst-case scenario with the BIP applied at a full 15 percent, 10 percent, five percent, and not applied at all. We did contact our district managers and talked to them about our numbers in terms of what our resale value calculations were. We also talked to them about what our expected monthly rent fees would be. They have verified that we are in the market range, and that we are competitive. We have to remember that these do not have a profit margin factored to it. We would be glad to provide that to the Members. I think a lot of the frustration may be this time around on this issue is that we did not have a business planning process, which would have flushed out a lot of this information. We had a short time frame, and it is something I think is causing problems.

Regarding the comments about CMHC housing, this is actually our second year in the declining CMHC scale. Last year we had about $12,500 reduced. This year we will be seeing an additional $35,000. In the year 2006-07, for example -- the numbers grow -- we are going to see roughly $700,000. The numbers vary throughout the process right up until 2038 when we will be reduced down to zero.

The Member is also quite correct in his information in stating that the family sizes are shrinking. There are more singles out in the communities, there are more singles that need accommodation. It is something that we've pointed out as a target group, and we are going to try to accommodate and meet some of the demands by targeting single rental units and single accommodations.

I think the Member has also made some references to the increased core need. We will be tabling our 2004 core need results. I am anticipating that to happen on Monday.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Yakeleya.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. I would like to remind the Members to engage in conversation outside of the Chamber. Thank you. Mr. McLeod.