Thank you. We're now on page 8-33, district operations, operations expenditure summary, $31.676 million. Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I'll just reiterate what a lot of the other Members are saying about district operations and how they negatively affect the effective delivery of our housing programs because of the communication gap that happens from the grassroots to the headquarters. There's always a buffer zone that the district offices stop a lot of communication that should be going to the headquarters because a lot of it relates to district operations in general and the lack of support and communication that clients are receiving from their district personnel.

Just another point with the LHOs with respect to the support and monitoring and assessment that the district offices provide to the LHOs. I think that's pretty much nil. As far as what my experience is with the LHOs, the district offices or the district manager never did any kind of a monitoring or assessment or asked any questions as to the decisions that the LHO board makes or why they make those decisions. I think that's why a lot of the complaints from clients about nepotism, favouritism, only family members are getting houses, I think that's where it all stems from, is because they have been telling the district offices about these things but nothing ever comes out of it. The district offices say, well, it's the LHOs' responsibility, they made the decision and you have to abide by it. Even though their decision is clearly a decision based on favouritism and family. There's no appeal process for people who are eligible for a house but don't get a house because they have the wrong last name or something like that.

There's nowhere for them to go and ask for a review of that decision, and I think that's up to the district offices to provide and we don't get that out of any of the district offices, as far as I know. I think the South Slave district office is connected to all our communities by a short highway system, except for one community, Lutselk'e. I haven't seen a district manager there once since I've been in this position, and I don't think he's been there once yet, as far as I know. I just don't understand why he doesn't jump in his vehicle and do a tour every month and go talk to the people and find out what their concerns are and address them head on, instead of waiting for the people to come to his office with complaints of no progress or no communication and the likes.

Also with the support and the delivery of programs, I know five years ago the government had proposed that the LHOs would take on the social housing fabric or the responsibility for public housing, and then they would move on to carry on with more programs and stuff like that. It hasn't happened. That hasn't happened either because, again from my experience in the LHO, I was building capacity at the LHO level and then the district office would take the staff from my office away after they were trained with my training dollars, and they would go and be employed at the district office where they wouldn't really do anything then. That was a good job, because you'd be sitting in a nice government district office, whereas at the LHO level, you're always working and busy. So the vice versa was happening, and the office was actually built in a way that it could provide some room for some expansion, more office space so we could take on more programs and the like, but it hasn't even developed into anything more than the LHO still is, whereas the district offices have become bigger. They're all cramped in one office space, there are more staff and there are more dollars at the district level, yet each year the LHOs have to kick and scream for any extra little dollars that they get. There are no more training dollars in the LHO budgets. There is no incentive for people anymore to go and work for these LHOs, because they're always clawing back. If they come in under budget, they have to give it all back to the government. If they go in over budget, they have to come up with the funds themselves. There's something wrong with that system, I think.

I think in all the years I came in under budget, you had to turn it back into the government to go back in the general revenue, where if you go $100,000 over budget, you have to eat it, you have to bite it somewhere, lay off some staff or whatnot, and I don't think that's fair for the LHOs. I know that the district offices are constantly growing, and I think the dollars have to go through those district offices down to the LHOs.

Just another thing about some district office employee performance reviews. I think if this government sees employees in their district levels, good, long-term employees at the district level, handing in resignations because they can no longer work under the conditions that they're put under, then the Minister has to question what's really happening at that district level and get right to the root of the problem to find out why these long-term employees are moving on and don't want to be there anymore. There are a few instances I can name, but we're not here to do that.

I just wanted to make those concerns known to the Minister. I know the feedback he gets from the district level is all pink and rosy and everything, we're doing our best and whatnot. But a lot of times, it's all fabricated information and it's all la-ti-da, things are just status quo, nothing's worse, nothing's better. But things are getting worse, and I think the people are starting to just bypass the district level and just come straight to headquarters and the MLAs and the Ministers, instead of going to their district manager who is the guy who should be handling all of this stuff. When everybody is bypassing that level of authority, then I think that's something that should be examined. The Minister is probably going to be looking into that; I hope he will be anyway. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as we know, the local housing authorities do operate under their own rules, they do have their own by-laws and most of them are registered under the Societies Act. But I think that we definitely are trying to get more communities involved in retaining more of their revenues and generating more of their own revenues in-house with regard to delivering the different programs such as mortgage collection and also looking at the seniors repair programs and keeping those dollars in those communities. Again, through this review process that we're going through and reviewing our mandate, we definitely look at the way that we function, like I stated. Also as part of that, we are looking at our district operations to see exactly if they're functioning as they should be. If not, exactly what do we do to ensure that they are? So we will be looking at that as part of our review of the mandate and also looking at how we deliver programs and services and making sure that we are working with the local housing authorities to ensure that they have the tools they need to operate.

We all realize that over the last number of years there have been a lot of cuts, especially in housing, where, like you say, a lot of people left because they ended up with less money and also because of the cuts that happened during 1995 and on. That has had an effect on employee morale.

We do have to ensure that we maintain a good operation in the communities to maintain the housing stock that we have. But we have to keep our employees well trained and also acknowledge that we have an aging workforce, so they are going to be leaving and we have to replace

them and get the new people trained. Again, this is part of the overall review that we're looking at. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Villeneuve. Thank you. Committee, we're on page 8-33, district operations, operations expenditure summary, $31,676 million.

Page 8-34, district operations, grants and contributions, contributions, total contributions, $19.314 million.

Page 8-37, Public Housing Program funding, operations expenditure summary, $35.217 million.

Page 8-38, Public Housing Program funding, grants and contributions, contributions, total contributions, $35.217 million. Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a quick question on the rent supplement programs. I know the Housing Corporation has a number of contract arrangements with private developers to provide housing units, and do you pay rent supplements to these contractors based on occupancy or not. They just basically pay a flat fee for these units, regardless of whether anybody is in them or not. I know that the budget has gone up about $300,000. A lot of these contracts are 20-year contracts for buildings that aren't going to last for any longer than 20 years, but they're going to pay for themselves probably about 10 times over during that period. I'm just wondering if the government is still entering into similar types of contract arrangements for rent supp units in any of the communities. I know that for any private developer, that's just a money grab. It's a program that takes money right out of the government's pockets and puts it into a private developer's pocket. He just sits back and collects the rent fee. Housing is in charge of all the maintenance and the wear and tear of the building. I'm just wondering what the government's position is on that.

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we do have these arrangements, but most of them have a five-year time limit with an option to extend. We do lease some 250 units with this program. Again, most of the clients we are looking at are in the social envelope. We are getting out of this, but again we do have lease commitments for five years.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Villeneuve.

I guess what I want to ask the Minister, is the department still in the process of negotiating similar contracts with other private developers?

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, no, we are no longer getting into this type of lease arrangement. If anything, we're getting out of them.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. We're on page 8-38, Public Housing Program funding, grants and contributions, contributions, total contributions, $35.217 million.

Page 8-39, lease commitments - infrastructure.

Page 8-40, infrastructure investment summary.