Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. Madam Chairperson, in regard to the EDAP program, it's an application-based program. It includes information that is needed to determine the eligibility of the client, but also to ensure that the information that is provided is accurate and also realizing we are only one party to this arrangement. The other component is the bank. You have to also meet the requirements of the bank to be able to access not only EDAP money, but also bank financing to be able to obtain a mortgage.

The whole idea of being approved or disapproved all depends on the application itself. If the application is approved and, to use as an example, we run out of money, until dollars have been approved through this House, those applications are set on a priority list for those people who have been pre-approved, so the following year when dollar allocation is made, those applications that have been pre-approved and are in the system will be approved with new dollars coming forward.

In the case of Yellowknife; Yellowknife has had dollars left over in the past, so I am not too clear on exactly why this person was refused. Unless I know more particulars on the case itself and who we are talking about and what was the reason for the refusal; I would maybe suggest to the Member that we will talk about it later, or we talk to the president and see exactly what the reason for the application being refused was or not continuing the process of ongoing approvals. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. I will take that type of debate to another forum, so we do not need to continue that type of discussion. If I could just get the Minister to clarify, just in a few words, one point he made. I think he did say that if someone was approved, they would be considered a priority in the next cycle. If that was the case, assuming that there were no monies to be able to lend out or give out at that period, if he could just clarify that. I am fine in every other area and I will take up my discussion separately from this forum. Thank you, Madam Chairperson.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. Madam Chairperson, as I stated, if the application has been approved, it meets all the criteria and we run out of money, those applications are put on a priority list for the following influx of applications, once we get the capital approved here through the House.

Again if circumstances change, the person has to come back to update their application if there is any change of circumstances. Say you get laid off or you find a new job and your salary numbers that you were using may have changed; because of those types of circumstances, those types of changes, you have to come back and report it. If nothing has changed and the information is the same as it was the previous year, those applications are put on a priority list. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Krutko. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. I don't say this very often, but I was very satisfied with that answer. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Next on the list for general comments, I have Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. It has been a couple of days since I had my outburst about how I feel about the continuation of the market housing initiative. One of the things I said was that there is a need for us to have more discussion about how better to do this. I am hoping that I could ask some questions that could facilitate that. I want to talk to the Minister a bit more about what

he plans on doing with the housing mandate, given that we are well aware of the fact that the federal government will get out of the housing business in the North and we should have a long-term plan about how best to address that. Before I move into that, I will just ask some questions about the market housing initiative.

Madam Chairperson, I am well aware of the fact that we are not doing enough. The GNWT, as a government, is not doing enough to build housing and provide more of a supply of housing in all communities. I know that the Housing Corporation has various programs to meet that mandate, whether by social housing or by providing various lending and financing programs to enable the people who qualify for them to get into homeownership.

My thought is the Housing Corporation is in the business of providing housing and I like to think that they have policy people and engineers who know all about housing, who know all about how to build housing in the North. Has there been any thought given to designing affordable, functional, practical homes that we could provide to the North that are not mobile homes? The technology of building homes has improved so much that the local businesses, you go to Johnson's or Home Building Supplies or wherever, could probably order a home package to build a home. So it doesn't have to be mobile homes. Why can't we have a plan that works for our community and our climate, like the way we build schools and airports and things?

A lot of airports in small communities look the same because they lift from one design to another. Is there not a design done within the Housing Corporation that is a one family home plan, which we could buy a package for and we could massively distribute to all the communities? Do we do that? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Krutko.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. The Minister indicates that with the limited money we have, we want to move towards building multi-plexes because they are more economical; it would require less maintenance, it would allow more families to be housed in these units. It seems to me supplying homes by purchasing mobile homes moves away from that.

I want to ask the Minister how much money does the corporation actually spend every year on buying homes? How many do they buy yearly? How much money do they spend? Is there any room there to do some kind of design and long-term contract with whoever puts these houses together and see if we could put in a six-unit multi-plex in every community, one every year? Is there something like that going on? How much money does the corporation spend to build houses and how many units does that usually get them? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. Madam Chairperson, we expend in excess of $33 million for building homes in the Northwest Territories and also doing repairs to the public housing market. I would like to explain to the Member that most of these buildings are put out to a public tendering process or constructed through negotiated contracts. They are tendered so that people can bid on them and they are built in the North and, also, most of these packages we do have. This year I think we are looking at 158 units, which we are looking at building this year through the $33 million that is in the budget.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. Did the Minister say we are going to be building 158 units with $33 million? How much is that per unit? Is it about $200,000?

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the average cost is about $200,000 per unit which is pretty well stick built. Out of the $33 million, $5 million of that is for repairs to public housing stock. So if you take that out of the equation, you have about $27 million that is going to be put out for public tender for contracts. Also, those units that we are building are pre-designed so we have an idea of what those units are going to look like, the type of independent housing units or seniors facilities we are looking at. We already have

those pre-designed. We already have a patent on those. So we do have those units included. Again, the other thing is that people who apply for EDAP can go out into the open market to buy out an existing home that is already there. So the whole idea of EDAP is you are going to the bank for the mortgage. We are just helping you get you into the bank. So once you go to the bank, that choice is yours, what type of house you want to buy or if you want to purchase a mobile home or a stick built. That is your choice. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Ms. Lee.

Thank you. On that same line of questioning, if we are building 158 units, instead of going out for tender every year, and I don't know if we do this every year, but, is it possible to do a five-year contract where you get somebody to build 500, 600 or 700 units of same design house that is suitable and energy efficient for a family size of this day and see if we can get some return on costs and do long-term planning? Has the corporation ever thought of doing something like that so that we could bring the cost per unit down and provide housing to communities more efficiently and perhaps reduce the need to do something urgent like we had to do with the market housing and to rely on supply of mobile homes, which I believe is not as good as other forms of manufactured houses, and that we could consider other alternatives if there are some? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the Minister of Finance can allow us to consider multi-year funding but, in most cases, because we do have to come to this House every year for approval of a budget, as it sits right now, you can only plan for the budget year that is approved through this House and also because of our need surveys that we have to ensure that we continue to follow those surveys so that we know where to earmark our dollars so, when we allocate money, we know where the need is through the surveys. Again, it is an approval process that is approved here in the House and that is the same thing with capital. You can't approve that capital items are going to be given every year until it is approved here in the House. Because of that restriction, we cannot commit to long-term allocation of capital, because it has to be approved every year in this House.