Thank you, Madam Chairperson. I think we do have to find new initiatives. Market housing is one component; but what we have to realize is the challenge that we are facing and where we are trying to go, is to try to find affordable, adequate and suitable housing. I think the keyword is affordable.
We see a lot of people who are middleclass people and low-income people having to depend on social housing to such a degree that it is having an impact on housing programs across the Territories. In order for us to be able to meet that challenge, we have to find ways of bringing down the cost of housing, but also doing it in such a way that, at the end of the day, it is affordable to people; looking at unique ways of constructing and looking at new energy-efficient homes to bring down the costs and also ensuring that we have the resources by way of program resources.
We have talked about spending well in excess of $12 million just on access programs, IHP programs, to make sure that people are able to get into homeownership. Again, that is a challenge we are all facing. The other big challenge we are facing in the North, that we all realize is out there, is just trying to find the labour force to deliver a lot of these projects in our communities, by realizing that we have a high cost of construction in just trying to find people to construct a lot of these units.
That is why it is important that we develop that capacity, but also realizing that we have to find unique ways of working with CMHC, the federal Minister of Housing and also looking at the partners that we have in the Northwest Territories.
I am presently working fairly closely with Bill Erasmus, who is developing a housing strategy for aboriginal communities in the Northwest Territories. Through our shop and in working with Billy's people, we are pulling this information together so that when they go to the federal government or we go to the federal government, we have information that is consistent. It doesn't matter if it's coming from ourselves as government or an aboriginal organization, we still represent the same people.
The more resources we get, regardless of how get it here, the better off we will be at the end of the day to ensure that we are able to deliver these housing programs in the Northwest Territories. We have to be opened minded to ensure that we start looking at who else is out there and also how we can build these partnerships. Again, we have to send a message to Ottawa.
This is a real eye-opener for me; basically, there is $350 million pot of housing money for affordable housing, then they divvy it up based on per capita and we get $400,000 to us paid out over four years, you can't build housing with $400,000, never mind trying to account for it over four years. So these are the roadblocks we're up against. But I think that through our looking at the mandate of the corporation and developing a northern housing strategy that's made here in the North developed by Members of this House, along with the government and our partners, we have to have a pact, something together that's made in the North to deal with the challenges we're all having to face. Thank you, Madam Chair.