Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We receive some $14 million from CMHC as revenue, but our expenditures are $32 million for the housing subsidy.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. McLeod.

So the money from CMHC is going to sunset in so many years and it will keep going lower and lower. Are we going to be filling in the gaps to keep delivering the same programs?

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is entirely up to this Legislative Assembly, whether or not that continues. At this point, that is what is happening and that is what we are expecting to happen in the foreseeable future. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to the Minister. Some of my colleagues were commenting about the delivery of programs from ECE. Has there been any contact or discussion with the local LHOs to continue delivering the same program maybe on a contract basis? They are doing it right now and they are quite good at it. Are there people from ECE working with them to learn how to work the program, or is there a possibility that you could contract some of this work to local LHOs? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There may be cases where that situation happens, but we are trying to move to consolidate all of our income security programs into one office as we move forward. One of the areas we are looking at through the whole income security review is how our subsidy program should be structured. So there may be changes in the future to our subsidy programs, but that's something we are going to work with the Members of the Assembly on in the future. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. McLeod. Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I came up with one other question I would like to ask the Minister on this $1.3 million. I don't know if he can answer it, or if the Minister of the Housing Corporation might have to answer this one, but what are the people who were servicing the public housing subsidy going to be doing? Is there a corresponding decrease in positions in the Housing Corporation? Where does that show up? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will refer that question to the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Sorry, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we roughly calculated that we have lost about five PYs. Out of that, we are just reassigning the responsibility of those programs. All it does is eliminate a portion of the work that was being done by the LHOs, which was looking at how you assess a client and determine what their rent is going to be because they are a low income client and you gave them the bigger subsidy. So now the responsibility will go to ECE. We will still have to have people come in and fill out an application to become our tenant. Once they become our tenant, they take the application, they go over to ECE and say I have filled out an application, I have been approved to move into a unit, which is owned by the Housing Corporation or local housing authority.

So what we have done is we basically, in house, moved responsibilities around. There is no loss to LHOs, but we did have to cut back in certain areas on our O and M for our headquarters and regional operations to fill in that gap. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, no, if there was a loss of five PYs, that's the first I have heard of it. I guess something would have to give, if you are looking at an additional 10.8 under the umbrella of ECE. I have a couple of questions that flow from this and I am wondering if the LHOs supported this move. That is the first question. The next question would be because the responsibilities have changed, will it affect the funds that flow to the LHOs? Will their funding be impacted and were they supportive of this? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I believe I heard Mr. Krutko say, there was no change to the LHOs, but perhaps we should refer to Mr. Krutko for a response on that question.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Krutko.

Yes, we did have regional workshops with all our LHOs and also we've had workshops with the total territorial organization. So we have consulted them before we came to this point. Again, for us it's just a change of our responsibilities. We used to do more client relations and dealing with social clients, but I think through that we'll be able to shift our focus more on the program delivery side, and also in our communities, LHOs will now focus strictly on managing, and maintaining, and improving the upkeep of our facilities. It's just a matter of shifting our focus. I think now, with that, we're hoping to devolve more authority to our LHOs through collection and looking at making sure that we do the improvements that we have to to bring up our housing. We think with that shift of focus it will improve our services, but also we'll be able to focus more strictly on the property management side than dealing with the social side of housing. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So basically I think what I hear the Minister saying is that the LHOs are going to continue to do what they've always done with the exception of looking after the social housing policy. What I didn't hear the Minister say is because the responsibilities are diminished, are they going to see an impact in their funding, or is the funding going to remain the same now that we're going to let ECE handle what they were doing for an additional $1.3 million? So nothing really has changed, Mr. Chairman, aside from the fact that now we have ECE handling the social housing program and it's going to cost us an additional $1.3 million. That's the only thing that I've seen that's changed. Thank you.