Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we usually tender out our packages to the winter road communities in the fall time so that those packages could be ready to go on the winter roads usually December and January. In some communities, we only have about a month window of opportunity so we try to have these orders out by the fall season. In regards to the barge communities, it is usually the spring months when our budget is approved, the allocation to those communities by way of the barge transportation that has to take place over the summer months. Then the road communities are usually done at the same time. In regards to the winter road communities, we have the budget. We basically submit our tenders out in the fall season so we can have the fall packages prepared for the winter haul in usually December, January and February. That is roughly how we tender our packages.

Thank you, Minister Krutko. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the second issue I have is, it may have been brought up already by other Members in terms of people who have been approved by one way or another through a funding program to get their house renovated or retrofit, is the owner of the house or the signature of the loan involved in the approval process, the last sort of walk around the house? I heard somewhere that some people need to be reminded of the contractors that need to involve the owners in the final inspection of the house, or it is not what they agreed to, or sometimes they have a discrepancy with the technical team and the owner itself. They want to make an improvement to the house. The owner thinks it should be done this way. The decorator's wife thinks it should be done this way. Is there any process being looked at by this department to have the owner give the final say on each step of the housing to make sure that this is what they are asking for, this is what

they signed their name on to this loan to repay? I just want to get that cleared up by the Minister. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mahsi, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we do sit down with the client. They do a walk-through of the unit once the project has been signed off. When they go through the walk-through, the client, along with the person from the Housing Corporation, inspects everything. At the end of it, they have to sign it off. Also, as part of the arrangement, there is a one-year guarantee that is in place for if there is any deficiency or whatnot within that one year. So you are covered under the insurance that we have in place, and also the contract that we have, there is a holdback for a contractor. So we do have steps that allow the individual homeowner to go through, do the final inspection, sign it off, that they walk through with the Housing Corporation staff in which they, along with the individual, check everything off. He has to sign it off before the house is handed over to the homeowner. But there is also a one-year insurance that we have in place to protect against any deficiencies that may occur within that one year. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Krutko. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, how does the owner determine a deficiency which the contractor might not agree with that? How do you get a qualified person to say, well, this is a deficiency, so please come back? You still have a warranty on this house. The contractor may be out of the country in terms of the Northwest Territories, maybe in southern Canada. If they pay their way back here, they are going to kick and scream all the way back to that community. How does the Housing Corporation get the contractor to come back and honour that commitment, agreement, or quality of work? We shouldn't use him at all, again, in terms of any type of work in the future because they will have to go the community contractor in the community to finish the work. That is where, Mr. Chair, that some of the contractors in the community say we have to come up and clean up their work. That kind of discussion we are having. I just want to make it very clear that the owners need to really know what they are signing off in terms of just walking around the building and say yes. They need to really understand. I hope that Housing provides that type of education for the homeowners when they sign on. It may seem that they are not, but I think they are. But there are a lot of complaints about that, so I want to see how he could address that. There is lots of hearsay and all that stuff. There are a lot of stuff that is questionable even for some of the contractors coming, because it is cold in October and November. They want to get out right away. It is freezing up, so there is certainly a different process for us in the communities that don't have an all-weather road. We are on a sort of a rush building project here. That is what I have for the Minister, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, in regards to the Member's concern regarding the inspections, we do have technical people that basically do the inspections on our behalf. I know that one of the issues on the mandate stuff was we were looking at five positions for more technical officers. Right now, we just have one person in each region. We are finding that they are having a hard time just keeping up. I think that is where a lot of communities are concerned that people aren't doing the inspections or whatnot. Again, we only have one person in each region where he has to serve all of the communities. One thing we are hoping for is, through the mandate changes, to be able to increase that by one more person so we have two in each region.

We do have a warranty that is in place. If the Member wants, I can give you a copy of the warranty that we use that basically is in all of our contracts so people understand that the contractors know what the warranties are. Mr. Chair, if I can provide this information for committee so that they can have a copy of exactly what the warranty is in the contracts we provide to our contractors, making them aware that they are responsible for that one year.

Thank you, Minister Krutko. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you. I have my last question and then I will be done with the Minister of Housing. Mr. Chair, we certainly need to get the support into the communities and have the owners really know the dotted line that they are singing on for their homes and that they fully understand, along with the contractor. The contractor needs to really know who the owner of this house is, who is paying the bill. Sometimes it is the other way around there. I certainly support the Minister in terms of getting some more technical advisors into our region and into the regions that really need help. They stay in our community longer than four to eight to one day. They stay longer. They stay two or three days in our community. Don't rush back home right away. Stay in our community and work with them. Really make them understand.

That is all I have for the Minister of Housing. Thank you.

Thank you. Does committee agree that the Housing Corporation's main estimates have been concluded?

Thank you. I would like to thank you, Minister Krutko, and your witnesses for being with us this afternoon. Thank you.

Thank you, committee. You can pull out your grey binders. We are on Bill 18, Appropriation Act, 2006-2007. I will give committee a second to just get that in front of you.

Thank you, committee. I would like to call the Committee of the Whole back to order here. What we will do, we are on tab 18 in the grey binders. We will stand down the consideration of the preamble and the clauses of the bill and start with the schedule first. So if committee could turn to page 3 under Bill 18, schedule, amounts

appropriated for the 2006-2007 fiscal year, part 1, vote 1, operations expenditures, total appropriation for operations expenditures, $1.068,323 billion.

Thank you, committee. Part 2, vote 2, capital investment expenditures, total appropriation for capital investment expenditure, $110.620 million, total appropriation, $1.178,943 billion.

Thank you, committee. We are back on page 1, please. We will go clause by clause starting with clause 1.

Clause 2.

Clause 3.