Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I just had some inquiries as well on our mortgage system that the Housing Corporation has. I know our constituents are very happy once they're approved for a mortgage or approved for a house under any one of the programs, like EDAP or a supported lease. The excitement and anticipation of these families, they are often young families. But I find that a lot of the inquiries, a lot of the concerns that I received in my office are with respect to construction techniques and inspections. What often happens is the constituent says I haven't seen any inspectors and that kind of stuff. But I was giving this some thought, and what happens is that the people that are being approved are the homeowners, but they're not being involved in the process. They should be responsible for the construction of their home once they're approved because often when the house is completed they're responsible for the costs of the house, they're responsible for the mortgage. Sure, there's some subsidy there, Mr. Chairman, based on income and family size, but, overall, they're paying for the house and yet they're not being responsible for its construction.

I'm kind of thinking therein lies the problem. In the free world or in other places, once you're approved for a mortgage from a bank, the money is there for you and it's the same with our system, I imagine. Once you're approved for a system, for a program, the Housing Corporation has the money for you and in the other world the bank has the money for you. In the free system, it is that you are responsible to general contract your own house. That means, Mr. Chairman, you have to find someone to build your house, construct it, or you can do it yourself. But then when you do that, you sign contracts and allow other people to construct the home for you under their own timeline. You're involved, you design your own house, and you give them some kind of time frame. Usually you want to be in your house within six months.

But then in our system, even though the government's got money for you, they keep the responsibility for building the house. That's driving people crazy because they're paying for it and often the Housing Corporation hands out the contracts, they're giving it to the contractors and they don't allow people to participate. Often they come to me and they say I don't want that contractor building my house because look at what he did to the other 10 houses over the past 10 years. But the corporation says our system is that it's our money and they're the low bidder so, no matter what, they're getting the contract. But if you had a loan from the bank, you would never get that contractor.

So the Minister is going to have to explain to me why it is that they're building the houses for the client. If the client is expected to pay the money and repay that money through a mortgage, then they have to have a say and be part of the process. In fact, in one of my communities, Mr. Chairman, there's a lady getting her new house constructed and it's right next door and she keeps saying that guy is never there, or that construction technique looks shoddy, or the inspector is never showing up for the next stage of the process. Yet nowhere in the paperwork does she get to sign off on work progress, or progress reports, or anything like that.

It works really well in the free market system. You're the homeowner. You have to sign off on the guy's billings. You don't have to inspect it, but you have to sign off the billing. The floor's completed and everything's in place and he's ready to move on to the next step. In the other system, the homeowner actually signs off that, yes, the floor is completed and the guy wants some money and he wants some cash flow, so he signs it off that the floor is completed. But with our government system, somehow the corporation knows better than the people whose houses they're building. But nowhere has the client given the right to the government to build that house for them. So there's something missing there. The Minister is going to have to tell me how that happens that the homeowner transfers the right over to the Housing Corporation for them to build that house and give that contract to whoever they think is right. So I'm a little bit confused there. If it's like a loan, then we should be behaving like it's a loan and give the client and the constituents that responsibility, Mr. Chairman.

As well, that concept can be extended to the repair program because often the repairs that we're doing, like in Fort Liard where we're paying lots and lots for mouldy homes there and it's costing lots and lots of money, too. It's like 40 or 50,000 dollars. Often these repairs, we expect the clients to repay that as a loan, as well. But there again, they have no control over who does the repairs or who's inspecting it, they're not signing off on it and yet we're coming in there as a government and saying, look, we did all this work, you better be paying or we're kicking you out, and the guy says I'm not part of the process, I'm not even responsible for how the work got done. So there's a disconnect there, Mr. Chairman.

I just wanted to know if the Housing Corporation can explain how that system works where they're getting the loan and yet the government's responsible for all the building costs or the building program. I can see it if there was a lack of ability to plan and get these generals out, but, at the same time, the client or customer should still

assign that responsibility back to the Housing Corporation. Because often, they keep telling me that, you're going to let that guy build it even though I approached you six months ago and I said I don't want that corporation or that company to build that house. I can find other people to do it more efficient and quicker.

In fact, there's lots of success stories out there. In Nahanni Butte there's a guy who had his house built in four or five months and he's living in there. That's a huge success. I hear they're trying something similar in Hay River. We're going to have to look at those practices, and look at those successes, and see how they came about. But just in terms of responsibility there, Mr. Chairman, if the Minister can detail for me, or lay it out, how it is that responsibility becomes the Housing Corporation's even though we call them the homeowner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.