Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to start off by thanking the Social Programs committee. I know there's been a number of issues that have been raised with the Housing Corporation in the past little while, and I commend them on the report that they presented to us earlier. They have covered off a number of important issues, but I just wanted to, if I could, share with you a few of my concerns as I see it.

One of the more complex things, I think it comes from a policy direction of the government. I think it's been a policy of the government to build stand-alone units across the Northwest Territories for the past 25 years. I'm just wondering, maybe it's time that the government re-examined that policy, because in light of the rising energy costs that are even more pronounced here in the Northwest Territories because of our cold climate, I'm wondering if it's time to re-examine that policy. What I really think should be happening is we should be looking at building row housing, building six-plexes or eight-plexes, whatever you want to call them, and doing things that way, instead of rushing out and just replacing unit for unit for unit in all of these various communities. Why don't we try to collect what scarce resources there are for housing and try to get more housing on the ground? More roofs over more people heads? I think that might be one way to tackle it.

The other thing, I know the Minister knows I'm supportive of Novel and the potential that project has for the Northwest Territories, but again, those are stand-alone units and I think what I've seen in the past with the market housing initiative, specifically, if you want to get people into homeownership programs, you have to go out there and beat the bushes and try to identify who your clients are going to be. That wasn't done with the market housing initiative. I think if you're going to enter into anything like the Novel project, you have to go out and do your homework and go into every community and identify everybody that could potentially be a homeownership candidate. You have to make sure that you do that, otherwise I think we may be setting ourselves up for a big fall. Again, I am supportive of it. I think it may be a good project in the end.

The other thing I wanted to mention, and I was interested to see a response I got to a written question just recently where it was raised before about the Housing Corporation building seniors' facilities in the various communities, and I was really interested to see at the end of the response that I got that there was no historic information on occupancy levels in the Tuk seniors' facility. I find that really hard to believe, considering it's only five years old. How could you not come up with historic occupancy levels? Maybe because there's zero, or next to zero, or negligible. I think that's, you know, when we were in Tuktoyaktuk and we went to that facility, and I mentioned it before. You walk in, the heat is cranked up, there's nobody living there, and you open the fridge and it's turned on full. This is just allowed to go on and allowed to happen. That's just one example. There's numerous examples out there.

The other thing I wanted to mention, and I know the land administration has now become paramount in a lot of the communities and trying to get communities set up and geared up to allow more housing to be put in on the ground. I just think it's admirable that the Housing Corporation wants to try to take on this role, but we already have MACA and I think it's MACA's responsibility

to be looking at land development in communities and assisting communities with land development, not the Housing Corporation. I think you could work in concert with MACA, but I definitely don't agree that you need to have a full augment of staff online and get into land development in communities. I think there's already a government department that's mandated to do that kind of work and I'd encourage you to work with them. These are more or less comments, Madam Chair.

The other thing I wanted to mention, while I've got the floor, these rent supplement units that are negotiated, in some cases for up to 20 years, Madam Chair; 20 years negotiated over market rate. These contracts are virtually imposed upon local housing authorities. I just don't know how that is allowed to happen. How is it allowed to happen? I have no idea. I think the sooner we can get out of these types of arrangements, the better off we'll be. So I guess I'll leave it at that, Madam Chair, and again, the Minister can respond to some of these. The one thing I will want him to respond on is to the re-examination of the policy that this government builds a house and when one is replaced, it's unit for unit, and we just go about trying to find money to build single units. I think we have to really re-examine that policy, and the sooner the better. Thank you.