So I think it really has to be written down and not only for the Housing Corporation. From here on in I'm going to question every department on where it is so they can be prepared to bring it, starting with the next department, which is Justice.

---Laughter

So that's the thinking on the affirmative action targets, Mr. Chairman.

Just another logical thing that stands is that, yes, we are kind of centralizing our HR functions. In terms of the Housing Corporation, where does the department stand on that? What's their goal with that? What is their affirmative action goal, as well, Mr. Chairman? I hope it doesn't happen that they're pulling HR people out of the regions because one job in the region means quite a bit. But I'd like to know what the HR target plans are, what the affirmative action target plans are, and indeed that Christmas wish of mine which is to revisit the 1978 NWT Housing Corporation Act and really do something about it. Thank you.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as I stated from an earlier question with regard to reviewing our mandate and looking at the policies and procedures and guidelines that we follow, we can look at an appeals process. But you have to realize that the business we're in, we -- especially talking about people's rents or whatever -- do have to follow the Residential Tenancies Act because that's the legislation that governs the housing business in the Northwest Territories. We do have to abide by that act. If you're talking about programs and housing in regard to the construction or faulty construction of these units, I think we have increased the amount of inspections we do on our job sites. Also we ensure that the client has to be aware that they have to ensure that when they sign documentation or sign off the approval to move into a unit before it's concluded, it's also buyer beware. Again, the whole area of liability insurance has to be looked at, but we have to ensure that the people who do these contracts have the insurance liability and coverage that should go with it. Like you say, what I've found since I've been here is that people are coming to you with complaints that have been filed for five to eight years and they're still out there with people complaining about them and no one has taken a close look to see exactly what the problem is or to track down the contractor or to figure out when that contract was done. Again, there has to be some sort of a process, but you can't wait five to eight years to come forward with an issue and have it unresolved. Again, like I stated, we are reviewing the mandate of the corporation and this is something we'll look at.

I'd also like to make the Members aware that if you're talking a major increase in the structure of an organization for which there's a cost associated, where do those costs come from? We heard that the amount of money we spent in an organization, the $30 million that's going to get transferred over. So out of $100 million budget we're now going to be dealing with $70 million. We have to see what the financial implications are of doing this.

The other issue you touched on was affirmative action. I think it's important that we do look at our affirmative action statistics to make sure we're following the affirmative action policy, but as a corporation we do have in excess of 65 percent in the corporation's headquarters staff who are classified as affirmative action. In our communities, through our LHOs, we're up to 85 percent. That shows we have put a major emphasis in ensuring we have followed the affirmative action policy. Also, a lot of our business is done through regional offices, through our local housing authorities, so that's where the bulk of the people are. But we do have, like I stated, 65 percent of people at headquarters who are classified under affirmative action and 85 percent at our local housing authorities. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Next I have Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Earlier today I was talking about some numbers, Mr. Chairman, and relating information that was put before the committee while it was preparing its work that showed that expenditures at the local and regional housing authority levels were being reduced by somewhere in the neighbourhood of $1 million while expenses at headquarters were increasing by about that same amount. I just find that so at odds with the kind of thing we should be trying to do here in government. I've done a little research to find those numbers, Mr. Chairman, and I think most of them are borne out in the pages contained in the main estimates. But I would like to confirm something with the Minister. This covers the expenditures or amounts allocated to local housing organizations where the main estimates for this current year were $35.93 million. So I'm looking for that confirmation, Mr. Chairman, that the main estimates for 2004-05 were $35.93 million. Is that level of detail correct?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, under the main estimates for 2004-2005, which was last year, there was an estimate of $35.93 million, but the actual amount that was expended was $34.982 million. So if you look at that actual number in the context of the main estimates for this year, there is an increase of almost $700,000 from the actual amount that was spent last year and the amount earmarked to spend this year.

I just want to point out another item for Mr. Braden. Under district offices under capital acquisition, the $12.444 million, that's where the biggest increase has taken place is in the capital acquisition which has gone from...(inaudible)...million from last year. So that is the $5 million increase that we're talking about. The majority of those monies are expended for the housing programs with respect to the EDAP, IHP, et cetera. That capital acquisition, most of those dollars will go back directly into communities for infrastructure. So that's where the largest change with regard to the budget amount is. If it looks like it's gone to the district, realistically it's a capital acquisition which will be expended for those capital items which will go to communities.

Okay, you know, Mr. Chairman, I'm not going to challenge the Minister or doubt that he's wrong, but he's introduced something in here that I can't understand. He's talking about capital, I'm talking about operations. He may be entirely correct, but perhaps we're going off on a tangent here in our venue this evening, Mr. Chairman. I really think we'll be spinning our tires. I won't say that the Minister's wrong, but I still remain very concerned that there is a trend even in some of the forecasts that committee was presented with that showed the corporation was quite prepared to, from the information I saw on an operational basis, take money from the communities and spend it at headquarters. I might in another venue be convinced otherwise.

Mr. Chairman, there has been a lot of discussion this evening about the market housing initiative and it's an area that really concerns me to quite a degree based on the expectations or objectives that were outlined for this program. Optimistically and appropriately when things came together for this program early last year we certainly took this on as something that was going to fulfill a very urgent need in the small communities to help those communities attract and keep essential public workers, teachers, nurses, and other health professionals, to be specific. But we have before us now a very sorry report on the outcome of that program of, what was it? Twenty-two units delivered over the course of several months this summer and fall; nine I understand are occupied. The difficulties encountered by our corporation in bringing these in, the Minister has gone on at length about all the different problems and hassles and things that occurred. I get bored, Mr. Chairman, listening to this, especially coming from an organization that this year so proudly declared 30 years of operations and expertise and knowledge in the Northwest Territories. Yet they still came back and said we had problems finding gravel and problems putting in power and this kind of thing. This is not the kind of thing I want to hear, Mr. Chairman, from the agency that has 108 people working for it and a budget of $100 million and yet comes back and says we had a problem installing some trailers in some of our communities.

I note, too, Mr. Chairman, some similarities between what went wrong with the market housing initiative and what went wrong with the corporation's attempt to sell houses to Alaska as outlined in the 2004 report of the Auditor General to this Assembly, which was tabled in this House last October. I'm going to paraphrase very briefly from this, but there are correlations here that I think are worth highlighting, Mr. Chairman. The Auditor General commented on the Housing Corporation's shipment of unassembled housing units to Alaska saying that, knowing that, by the way, I guess the end story should be clear, only one of nine units were sold to this village in Alaska. The rest of them, by a series of almost comedic decisions, ended up on the beach at Tuktoyaktuk. We don't quite know what their status is from there. I'll get to that in a few minutes. But in the meantime, the Auditor General said that any time a venture fails it is important to investigate why and to ask what should be done differently in the future. The corporation tried to sell housing units in Alaska on which it lost money. In our view, management, and here's the point I find interesting on this case, the Auditor General says, in our view, management failed to follow certain basic accepted business practices which could have reduced its risk. For instance, in August of 2001 the corporation shipped nine unassembled housing units to the state of Alaska. This was done based on a verbal agreement with municipal authorities that the village would purchase the units.

Mr. Chairman, this, I think, is pretty much what the Housing Corporation did last summer when it decided to send 22 units to, how many different communities, 66 beds out there. Mr. Chairman, I'm looking at the government, at the Cabinet, because we should keep in mind that it was the Cabinet that issued a directive to the Housing Corporation to do this. Now, it is not commonplace for the Cabinet to release publicly or to MLAs records of decisions, so I cannot, I will not be able, Mr. Chairman, to assess whether the corporation really followed to the letter the instruction from Cabinet. I'm assuming here, Mr. Chairman, that it may not have been a very well crafted directive to the Housing Corporation because, boy, we went all over the place here.

Verbal agreements, as the Auditor General points out, were essentially what the Housing Corporation, from information I have, took to be its instruction. They were going to put so many houses in these communities. We're going to do it our way. Another basic business practice that was ignored: Where were the surveys and information from the target audience, the nurses and the teachers who we really wanted to house? There's no evidence at all. Despite committee's request last spring that they do that, that they go and talk to these people, well, no, that never happened. Now they're coming back, Mr. Chairman, and asking us to do this all over again for another $2.6 million and I have yet to see any evidence, Mr. Chairman, that the corporation or Cabinet -- these are the people who issue the directives -- has insisted that we get better market information so that we can design our product to suit the needs of that market.

The Auditor General goes on to say in this report that the corporation could have reduced its risks and losses if its management had a signed sales agreement before shipping the houses to Alaska. What a radical concept, Mr. Chairman.

Radical.

That you would actually have some kind of a guarantee or an indication of a positive customer before you drop these things in place and then find out that, oh, gee, maybe we should have furnished them. Golly, maybe the rents that we have to charge at 110 percent recovery are going to be too much for these people to afford. This is where the corporation botched it. They did not put together a product that met the basic needs of the customers. The difficulty that I have with this whole thing, Mr. Chairman, is trying to find the confidence and justification that we should sign off on this $2.6 million and let the Housing Corporation go ahead with phase two. I've run the clock out and I thank you for listening, Mr. Chairman.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Krutko.

---Interjection

Order, please. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have to agree with the Member that there have been some problems, but I have to admit it is a good program and we definitely will proceed with it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think points the Members on this side are bringing are very legitimate and that's what we're here to do. I think it would do the Cabinet Members and the Minister a lot of good to, if not adhere to them, at least pay heed to them. Mr. Chairman, I think it's really important to note that we know this Minister was not there when this policy came about. We're not placing blame on this guy, so I wish he would just quit being so defensive. There was another word that I had to refrain from.

---Interjection

Flipping defensive. Anyway. How can we have a dialogue about not only how we're spending money, but how do we introduce a new policy? How can we have that kind of dialogue if all we get is either ignorance about the concerns being raised or defensiveness or just total fear on the part of so many Members that if we say anything negative about these housing initiatives that we're not going to get that extra bed? The Minister keeps talking about these 66 new beds that we have placed into parts of the Northwest Territories that weren't there before, well those are sitting empty. I'm telling you, I don't want to be known as a part of a legislative...I'm not really looking forward to being remembered as part of the Assembly that put a bunch of mobile homes all over the place in the Northwest Territories. Nothing against mobile homes, but surely if there's room for us to do better, we could do better. We're not going to do better unless we talk about what we've done wrong.

I'm astounded. I'd never read that report before about the Housing Corporation's venture to Alaska. I think it might be forgivable on the part of the Housing Corporation if they went out and put 22 mobile homes without written contract because they didn't know better. But if this is the second time, I'm sorry. We have 100 people managing $100 million and their only responsibility is to put housing in the North and they don't even know how to do a signed agreement? We're just here to say sure, no problem? I cannot tell you how frustrating this is. You put two or three more beds in the community and everybody says, please, don't say anything, we'll take anything. I could appreciate that. It's the extent of desperateness that we have in communities because we have a housing shortage. Yet there's no room for discussion on our part about how we do this better. How do we spend $100 million better so that we can have more of that money going into housing?

We're not saying that market housing initiative...if the government feels that because there are no private operators in communities, no one is interested in going into that market in small communities, it is only the government who could do that, I could accept that philosophically. I believe that's the role of government. Government has the role to play in places where there is no private market. But if that's what they're going to do, they have to know what they're doing. So far only...we have really not much more than a verbal agreement to go to the second year. The only thing we have is from the deputy minister saying we might be able to hire so many number of people.

If the Housing Corporation wants to continue to send housing units to communities without knowing where they're going to go to that's fine, but can we not talk about long-term plans? Because this introducing market housing into small communities is a long-term plan, this is a 10-year plan. This is something that the Housing Corporation wants to do now. So why do we have to order something every April? Why do we have to order mobile homes when we know this is what the corporation wants to do? Why can't we do it in a way that we could order economical housing units? Why can't we do that?

We put out 22 units. Only five were taken by the people intended; nine because of extra people that we have allowed to buy them; and we don't know what's going to happen to the remaining 11. Next year the Housing Corporation might come back and say, you know what? We have 20 units we don't know what to do with. It's not like all these units are being taken by everybody. Why can't we delay this program for one year until they figure out how they're going to do this? It's not going to keep anybody outside of these homes by the sounds of it because they can't...anyway.

Let me ask a basic question. Why is it that the 109 people that manage $100 million at the Housing Corporation don't know what they're doing? Thank you.