Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I will also support the motion put forward by the honourable Member, but I have some issues with the numbers also. Thirty-two to 18, 32 to 25, it is all questionable just due to the fact that we all know that income levels in the NWT have risen quite significantly over the last five years due to all the mining development that has been going on. Interestingly enough, with the 76 percent rise in the average income level in the NWT, there has been no correlating or corresponding decrease in the number of income recipients that we have, income support recipients that we have here in the NWT, Mr. Speaker. I think that alone just speaks volumes with regards to how our housing is taking away a lot of that income that people are willing and able to go out and make, but they decide not to just because of sometimes the rent scale is one of the big issues in the communities that people deal with. When you go out and you see your income is going to go up by $30,000 from one month to the next because you are getting a job in the mine, and your rent goes up by $1,500 from $250, that is a big bite. People just aren't willing to take that bite. Therefore, that is why we say the rent scale policy that we have in place is a disincentive for a lot of people who want to get jobs and make a decent living for themselves.
I know also, on the other side of the coin, the Housing Corporation has to raise a certain percentage amount of money to put back into the public housing initiative just out of rent alone. That is getting people to pay their fair share of rent. What is fair is different from what the government deems fair to what residents deem fair in the outlying regions, the isolated communities, the high cost of living. They all have a play on it. I know the government takes that into consideration, but maybe just not in the emphasis that the individual that is paying the rent does. On that, with the amount of money that the government gets back
from actually getting out of people's pockets the amount of rent for public housing is quite low compared to the subsidies that the ECE puts back into the Public Housing Program. But I think the real issue is how do we get people to be more responsive to why they have to pay their fair share of rent? I think that is the real issue here and not so much of how much you are willing to pay, how much the government is willing to charge you, but I think it is more or less why are people going to pay the amount that they pay? We will take in all kinds of factors like the condition of the house, your family dynamics, community dynamics, employment rates and whatnot, but I think people have to get almost like a picture drawn for them to show them that for X amount of years, you have been living in this unit and paying this amount of money, so as you take on a job, your rent is going to go up this high for X amount of months in order to recover some of that subsidy that the government has been giving to you for the last five or 10 years. People don't know that. There is just no information provided to them to say here are the numbers. Your government punched out $50,000 for your rent over the last five years. You put in $500 into that rent. Here is the discrepancy. Joe Blow next door has put in $10,000 and he is living in a worse unit. He has a job but the government doesn't pay as much in subsidies. I think people have to see that. They have to see the comparison from the guy across the street to the guy down the street. Everybody in the community has to be put on the same playing field and saying, okay, this is why it is different for you, you, you and you. We don't have that information. The clients don't get that information. Therefore, everybody is in their own little world with the LHOs and tensions just build at the community level.
Again, I am not really fully supportive of the 32 to 25 to the 18, but I will have to support it because it is included in the motion anyway, which drives a strong message home that something is wrong with our rent scale policy and we have to change it. We have been talking about it for 10 years here and nothing has come of it, so I hope with this motion coming forward that they will actually do something about it and something will actually get people to go to work and pay their fair share. That is what I deem fair. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause