Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Braden.

I guess I should perhaps ask for a clarification then. It was my understanding, and I stand to be corrected, that this is indeed a transitional year for the delivery of the social housing program. The corporation has the responsibility to actually deliver the services on the ground in the communities, but that by April 1st of 2006 that responsibility will be fully vested in ECE. The Minister is giving me the belief that we're going to take a year to figure out how to do it and then maybe some more time after that to actually do it. I don't know. The understanding I have of the program is that it's going to be as of April 1, 2006, they'll pull the whole ball of wax over to ECE and it should be anticipated that at least some of Housing Corporation's headquarters staff will be making some kind of transition during this fiscal year to enable that to happen. Maybe I'm missing something here. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as we all know, there's about $100 million in social funding. Our social subsidy program is about $30 million. This year the $30 million is just a paper transfer. We're transferring the paper from one department to another department, but we continue carrying on the activity that we did before. Next year, you still have to look at the other $70 million that's in our system of how that's going to be centralized. So this is just one component of a bigger component of programs. You have the Fuel Subsidy Program, you have the tax rebate, and those are the types of things that still have to be pulled together. So if the Member realizes, it's going to probably take another year for everything to come together. That's why we're giving the leeway of that one year. I'm not saying it may or may not happen; it's going to happen, but it will probably take another year to get everything pulled together. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Braden.

So this is now a two-year transition? Maybe more? When are we going to be able to decide how to do this, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Krutko.

Mr. Chairman, the answer is one year transition. It should be concluded by 2006, April 1st next year.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. I have Mr. Menicoche next and then Ms. Lee. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to continue some of my general comments that I began yesterday. Maybe I'll take off too on the area Mr. Braden was getting into in the area of social transfer to ECE. I'm still not convinced this is a necessary program at all. It was a bird's eye view of process, I understood it, when we discussed it when I first got elected. There were some things that kind of made sense at that time, but you look at the practicalities of it and I'm sure glad it's not instituted to start April 1st because I really am opposed to it. I gave it lots of thought and bounced it off people back home and they're not agreeable with it at all. It's something that I would like to put the breaks on. It doesn't make any sense. At first glance it kind of sounded like it was a way to generate money for the Housing Corporation, but you give it a real good second thought and what you're doing is you're creating a second generation of clients that will be in arrears, Mr. Chairman. That's all it's creating and that's why I'm totally against it. We're going to take some people who are working hard and making their monthly rent payments and then hurt their pride and self-esteem because then they have to go to another department for assistance. I'm telling you, some of these people in our communities work hard and never ask for help in their life. They may not even ask for it. But what we're actually doing is doubling their mortgage. If they didn't have arrears now, Mr. Chairman, they sure as heck within a year will be in arrears and that's not what we wanted to foster because we're designed to help these people to get them to free up some income and make them into good, prosperous homeowners who will make their mortgage payments. This is not the way to do it, Mr. Chairman. That's why I'm thoroughly against it.

Just getting back to self-esteem alone, some of the things that concern me are how will my constituents be treated because of this sudden change in eligibility, too? I'm not too sure what my constituents will be eligible for. How are they going to be eligible to access this, I don't know what you would call it, this transfer payment? How many more workers are we going to have to create to handle all these people because 50 percent of my constituents are in social housing and when you're talking 600 people, that's 600 more clients for ECE and they'll be screaming for workers, I can assure you that. We're already overburdened with workers. The committee keeps questioning every time you create a job if it's necessary and now we're going to send 600 extra people over to ECE on a monthly basis. I'm sure as heck they'll be screaming and they'll be overworked and they'll be looking for help, Mr. Chairman. These are some of the answers that I don't have, and Cabinet and the government just kind of precipitated that they'll have agreement with us and just transfer all this money over there. Just to take another phrase from the Premier, it's not real money. But it is because we're dealing with real people, you know?

Real people. Real money.

To me, what they're really doing is blindly going into a program that they haven't thought out. I took a bird's eye view and I thought that's what we were going to continue to do. If you use prudence and due diligence that's what you do. You take an idea, you sit and foster it, you work it around and you say, okay, this has some legitimacy here. But no, we've said, okay, we'll just jump and it's going to be done with the stroke of a pen. That's the kind of stuff that gets our government in trouble all the time. We do things with the stroke of a pen without giving it much thought. It might seem right at the time, but I'm telling you today is not the time. Maybe one day I can be supportive of it, but not today because people that talk about this back home are thoroughly opposed to it and it doesn't make sense to them at all. What makes sense is getting them into houses. It's not putting them further into arrears. That's why I'm really opposed to this transfer. It will just create more work for everybody, Mr. Chairman.

With that, I'd like to get the Minister's views of how he sees this transfer. Maybe his own personal view, because I'm certainly against it. Is there a plan? What is the plan beside just sending $35 million to ECE, to their already burgeoning budget over there?

---Laughter

The Ministers keep digging in their front pocket and their back pocket and finding nothing, yet we're transferring $35 million around like it was water sloshing around in a pail, Mr. Chairman.

---Laughter

But here again, I want us to give it some good thought to take care of the real needs of our people today in our communities and they're all in social housing, a lot of them. If they find out what we want them to do, I'm sure they're not going to be very responsive and they're not satisfied with the feedback they're getting, Mr. Chairman. So in terms of a long-term plan, it sounds like there's a two-year transfer of all this money to ECE and in two years we'll get our clients going to ECE, but that's all I see, Mr. Chairman. So what exactly is the long-term plan? Another question I would have is who approved it? I didn't approve it. All of a sudden it's in the business plans and I say what's going on here. I'm thoroughly opposed here from the standpoint of in my riding and constituents, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, one thing I learned real quick being on this side of the table is that your opinion doesn't really count as long as you're giving the department's position. I think it's important for myself that we have to somehow centralize the social funding that this government spends. We spend almost 10 percent of $100 million that's out there that people are having to go in every other direction to find it. I think for me that's one of the good things out of this, but it's also looking at the one-stop-shop concept where you go one place to deal with those dollars that are needed for low-income people as well as to look at our program dollars that are out there from income support to fuel subsidies to tax rebates to education grants, whatever. With that, I'll pass it over to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment so that he can add to that.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I believe, Mr. Dent.

Mr. Krutko had referred the question to Mr. Dent. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I understand where Mr. Menicoche is coming from. I know it's a concern that's been expressed by a number of people and I think it's very important that everybody understand that on April 1, 2005, there will be no change. Nobody who's receiving assistance through a local housing authority will see any change at all. The partnership agreements will be carried on and the process for social housing will be maintained. What we are going to do over the course of the next couple of years is work with Members to take a look at our income security programs and we may decide that there are needs for change, but at this point nothing has been proposed. So I want to make sure everybody understands that we're not proposing that there be any change. The person in the community will have the same process to follow for accessing social housing in April as they do in March; so it won't be any different next month from this month. We will be taking a look at all of our programs and starting to decide where we want to go with them.

So the process for determining what changes, if any, we will see is one that is very early on right now and there won't be any changes that we don't work with Members and then have the public discussion about. So it's not something that we're saying here's the change and it's going to happen right now. We've got a lot of work to do and it will be done in consultation with Members.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Menicoche. Oh, Mr. Menicoche, you're time has expired. Sorry.

---Interjection

Mr. Chairman, I want to just continue on with some of the questions I have. Now that the thumping has cleared my head.

---Interjection

---Laughter

In his opening comments a couple of days back, the Minister spoke of the redefining of the mandate of the corporation. It indicates that a revised mandate for the corporation will be approved by Cabinet by April 2005. Could I ask the Minister more about what is to be expected in that and how do we, on this side of the House, expect to be consulted and take part in that? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, it is presently in draft form. We haven't completed the wording of it. It is looking at the overall operation of the Housing Corporation in light of the social funding aspect, the $30 million decline, and also looking at housing in general. What our role will be in regard to a new, revised Housing Corporation. You have to realize it has been 30 years since this corporation has been established and I think a lot has changed in the last 30 years. I think we have to develop ourselves so we can deal with the housing challenges we're facing, but also deal with the economics of what's happening in the Northwest Territories by way of building capacity in the communities and developing our corporation so it's more of a well-tuned organization. Especially where we're talking about our human resource development or taking advantage of our big developments, the pipelines, or looking at how we can look in light of ourselves to be more involved in the business side of housing. Not just in regard to providing public housing, but contracting or joint venturing or looking at pilot projects for different communities to deal with some of these housing needs. I think the big one for us is just to try and deal with the housing situation we find ourselves in through the surveys we have done. We have some big challenges such as in a lot of our small communities.

The idea of going forward is that we have to change the way the Housing Corporation presently does business while also realizing we have to prepare ourselves for these challenges that are ahead of us in regard to the developments that are out there. One of the sides of our business that a lot of people don't realize is that we spend a lot of money offered to businesses to provide houses through loan guarantees or look at CMHC funding. There are a lot of federal dollars out there that we have to develop ourselves to access.

Again, it is in a draft right now and it will have to go to Cabinet to be reviewed. From there we will be moving forward to looking at how we look at the continuance of housing. I think we hear a lot of homelessness and we talk a lot in regard to transitional housing, youth facilities and whatnot. I think we have to start looking at housing in a holistic approach. Where do people go who are homeless? How does a homeless person get into a shelter? Where do they go once they get into a shelter? There's a transitional process. Also, new people from public housing or social housing into home ownership. We have to start taking down some of those barriers and in order to do that we have to change our mandate, change our programs or policies and procedures to do that. So that's what we're doing in regard to the review of the mandate. Thank you.