Mr. Chairman, the Minister's remarks to Ms. Lee's comments was absolutely right about the shortage, the need, the crisis we have in every one of our communities. I am not against the original design of this program, which was to help small communities get essential workers in comfortable, affordable houses. That's where the corporation has missed the target and that's where Cabinet, in the directive they have issued, has to take some of the accountability here. The problem that I have sitting where I am tonight, Mr. Chairman, is that I am asked to assess the viability of a program on a certain set of expectations. Those have failed. Now I am being asked to duplicate the whole thing again, in fact even go further, $2.2 million to $2.6 million now, with very little justification that we really learned how to do this better and how to meet the original target need for essential workers in communities.
The Minister has taken the part of this program that didn't work, those 13 units that aren't occupied and they said we will sell them off to whoever we can or we will turn them into social housing. We will do something with them. In the meantime, where is the answer for those communities that needed housing for their essential workers? That is what I am being asked to judge and to approve and I don't have the supporting evidence. That's why I am sounding frustrated and hostile about this.
If the corporation wants to come to me with a plan to get mobile houses up there and try to start a market where nobody else will go and that is a genuinely solid argument, then I am interested and I will listen. I will think about signing off on some more taxpayers' money to take that risk because I think it's a good idea. But don't ask me, Mr. Chairman, to approve a program on one set of circumstances that is going to morph its way into something else. I don't like to do business that way and that is what I am being asked to do.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to go back to the houses on the beach in Tuktoyaktuk to see if the Minister can provide some further information because at the time this report was filed by the Auditor General, Mrs. Fraser said we don't really know where it is for now. I will just paraphrase briefly from the report and again this was sent to us on September 22nd of last year and she concluded that: "The corporation shows the cost of these units, these nine unassembled units, originally designed for Alaska, at almost $1 million including the shipping costs, given the missing parts in the reported damage to some of the crates, it is not yet clear what the ultimate loss will be."
So we have some units on the beach in Tuktoyaktuk, according to the Auditor General. Can the Minister advise what the status is of these units? Do they have any potential for really being used perhaps hopefully to house some of our own people?