Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, colleagues, for giving me the opportunity to speak. I'd like to rise and speak in favour of the motion. Mr. Speaker, I think there is a lot in this motion and it reflects the frustration on the part of the Members in terms of the government's inability to meet the needs of housing in the North. It also speaks to the desire on the part of the Members to improve the situation as much as we can.
Mr. Speaker, I think there is a need to review the mandate and the work of the Housing Corporation in light of the fact that there are so many needs there and that we didn't see in the federal budget any additional funding to meet these needs. I know there are lots of programs in the Housing Corporation that meet the needs here and there in patchwork, but I think it is time for us to review this comprehensively and really have a discussion about where we are going from here.
Mr. Speaker, in this year's budget, there is about $35 million allocated for the Housing Corporation, and surely it is incumbent on us to do a better job with that money to make sure we create more housing for the people. We cannot continue to have the corporation introduce a policy like the market housing initiative. That was really poorly thought out, I must tell you, Mr. Speaker. I think even the officials and the Minister, in their private moments, would admit that the rollout of that was not as good as it could have been. It's hard to believe that I'm standing here exactly a year after all the debate we had in the House last year, and that there has been no work done to really change and answer to so many questions that were asked about why we are waiving the BIP, why we are ordering
mobile homes instead of doing more long-term thinking and see how we can really provide housing in communities. There is no real long-term view given to how we support and cooperate with the northern manufacturing industry.
Mr. Speaker, regardless of what the Ministers are saying, I can tell you there are businesses in Yellowknife and in Hay River, and I'm sure in Inuvik, there are lots of businesses in the North that would be interested in working with the government and becoming a partner in using what little dollars we have to build housing that meets the needs of northerners, that meets the needs of northern climates, that meets the needs of income situations in our communities. There could be partnerships with the band corporations. There are all sorts of creative ways in which the government should be looking at it, and this government had promised to look at that last year.
The previous Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation, the Honourable Michael McLeod, put it in writing that they would look at things differently and that they would not be coming here and asking us for a rush job because they had to meet the barge and whatever external circumstances that they couldn't control. A year later we're operating under exactly the same conditions and I'm just really tired of us sitting here, standing here, being asked to do the same dumb thing over and over again, Mr. Speaker. Sorry; less than intelligent things. Sorry; my apologies for that bad word.
Mr. Speaker, I've already made a lengthy, heated statement about what I think of the market housing initiative as one of the policies that did not work out so well in terms of addressing housing needs.
I am in support of the overall motion. I intend to pursue these issues that I have brought up further for the remainder of the Assembly during this session, because I believe these are really crucial issues that we need to discuss. If the federal government is not doing anything about our housing, it is incumbent on us to do what we can and do a lot more to address our housing needs. Coming up with willy-nilly, temporary, poorly-thought-out policies like the market housing initiative without doing all the homework is not the way to do that. Mr. Speaker, I will be voting in favour of this motion. Thank you.