Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I had a Member's statement ready to go today about energy, but, after hearing the interview on CBC Radio this morning with the president of the Housing Corporation, I am sorry, but I have to come back to the Housing Corporation again.
How can this corporation have the audacity to go on the radio and try to defend itself by contradicting the observations of the Members of this House? As far as I am concerned, the gloves are now off. I will make it my personal mission to point out, in painstaking detail, the tabled documents and the information in this House that will back up my comments. Obviously, the president doesn't get my point. I have no problem with investing money. I have no problem with spending money. I have a very big problem with wasting money. I also have a problem with lack of transparency and accountability.
---Applause
In the interview, it was stated that there are three units occupied in the Tuktoyaktuk seniors' complex. I am telling you, Mr. Speaker, that I, and almost all the Regular Members of this House, toured that facility with the
caretaker this spring, and I could see with my own eyes that the units were not occupied. So let's not split hairs over whether there are now three occupied units. One is the caretaker and his wife, for sure. My point, which seems to be getting missed here, is that the NWT Housing Corporation has limited resources. We have a critical shortage of housing in the North. We cannot afford to build multi-million dollar facilities, operate and maintain these, and accumulate costs of tens of thousands of dollars per year with no one in it, even if we had the money to throw away, which we don't. Sure, we can reprofile after the fact, but that is not the solution.
The other point of bringing up this facility is that it is not an isolated occurrence. I said that if the seniors' complexes in Deline and Fort Resolution have not yet been profiled, they also missed their target audience of housing seniors in those communities. Surely, with all the consultation and surveys about poor housing needs that the Housing Corporation has undertaken over the years, they can do a little better than this. Consultation in the community should have revealed whether or not there would be uptake or buy-in from the seniors. Admittedly, there are some cultural issues that needed to be taken into account, but those concerns should not be foreign to this government. We have a critical housing shortage. We have a budget. Is it too much to ask that we try to match those resources to those needs? If we don't have...