Thank you, Madam Chairperson. Madam Chairperson, we do have different models that are used in the North, like the Member mentioned. If you go to communities, any community throughout the western territory, most houses are pretty well similar from the Beaufort Sea all the way down to the Deh Cho and Nahendeh, because we do have people within the department that designed those houses particularly for the North. We have had programs that we have mentioned. We have had Weber, Access, SHAG units, HAP units; all those were part of an ongoing housing strategy for Northern Canada.
One of the areas that we are going towards is looking at these new structures. Like I said, the shift that we are making now as a corporation is that we are trying to get away from the single housing dwelling concept and more into multi-plex units. One of the main criteria that we are looking at is trying to have more energy-efficient homes to bring down the costs of operating those homes, but also bring down the cost of constructing these homes.
Right now with the labour market that we have in the Northwest Territories, it is very hard to find trades people, and also to be able to develop an economy where we have a lot of dependency on the rest of Canada, because we don't have enough trades people or they are too busy in other areas. We are paying $50 to $60 per hour for a tradesperson, because they have the monopoly and they know that they are a wanted commodity.
One of the things that we are looking at is developing a northern housing strategy. One of the things that we are developing in that strategy is looking at how we can consider building homes in Northern Canada, but also building those components into it: energy efficiency, fuel efficiency, and also cost efficiency. The bottom line is it has to be affordable to the client. Thank you.