Thank you, Madam Chair. In regard to the mandate, this process has been ongoing since last year. It's something that we've been working on. We've been having workshops with our local housing authorities. We've had workshops with all our maintenance people in the LHOs. We've had our regional directors involved in this process. We have done a lot of consultation already with the local housing authorities, with the maintenance staff in those organizations, and also the board of directors that was overseeing this was the regional directors. We have one in almost every region. I think it is time for this organization to change the way we do business.

As you've heard, we just celebrated our 30 years as a corporation in the Northwest Territories just last year. In 30 years a lot has changed in the North and I think because of the dynamics of the corporation, we also have to change with the times. I think in order for us to realize we're not immune to the pressures on development in the North. The biggest challenge we face, like I mentioned, is the area of just trying to deliver what we have right now. I think because of the competition in the area for tradespeople and contractors and whatnot, that we're realizing there's a higher cost to doing business in the Northwest Territories, especially in the area of housing and construction.

But again, the mandate is going to proceed through a new process where they have a board to go out and get public input and then come back, and I will report back to the standing committee and this House. So I'd just like to remind the Member that I have travelled along with the Member. I've travelled to most of the communities in the Northwest Territories and I have been consistent with my message. We are changing the way we do business in the Northwest Territories. Part of that change will include the change of how we deliver programs and services and also changing of the mandate of the corporation to be able to deal with some of these issues such as land development issues and being able to have capacity so that we can be able to find the people in the right areas to assist us on delivering. We are right now, like I mentioned earlier, the number of people that we've had in the Housing Corporation over the last 10 years have changed to almost half the size of the staff prior to division. We were at 195 people. After division we went down to 144. With the budget cuts ever since, we're down to 103. There has been a drastic change to the size of the Housing Corporation to deliver those programs.

We are committed to go back out, get consultation from the key stakeholders and Members of this Legislature. Thank you.