Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My comments will be around sort of the global perspective at this time. I'm personally concerned about focus. I've brought up, on a number of times, my personal concern that the Housing Corporation has an information systems program to do housing maintenance. I've said a number of times, for example, that this is the type of program that could be bought off the shelf at a large computer store. I've raised this concern a number of times because I'm concerned that we're worried about inputting data and whatnot into programs when we should be handing our employees hammers and pouches and nails. So our focus should be about putting houses on the ground, as opposed to maintaining a computer system. That's a personal concern because I just want to make sure that our focus is in the right direction. I mean, I really believe that we have a moral responsibility to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. I don't take that lightly. I believe that 100 percent. I think when it comes to people like our seniors and disabled and less fortunate, that solemn obligation needs to be held eternal.

When I visit a community, when we did our northern consultation and we saw someone's door with a huge gap underneath it, it just felt horrible. I felt that the focus needs to be a little bit more than rhetoric, because rhetoric should be saved only for election campaigns. But then we get into transparency problems, as mentioned during the EDAP.

Several months ago I had brought up the EDAP, as well as my Member to the right side of me here. We brought up concerns about the disclosure or the full transparency of our EDAP program. I brought it up on a number of occasions, that I'm concerned we're giving out loans, but still the accountability is there in a constructive sense that it's so high up you can't see why we're giving money away to people under what circumstances. I personally feel that a policy that this department should take on, and I think the Minister should be working with the appropriate Ministers, but the fact is that the policy should state that if anyone who gets any money through the government should have, we're only asking for a small step. We're asking them to make sure that their name's included at least in the accountability transparency concept so we can ensure that the right people are getting the right money. Why did we give away $72,000 to one person in the past? I don't know. But we've asked these questions and we continue with the housing program on our focus to help people, which I'm happy, but then we don't know why we're helping certain people because we don't know the details. So accountability and transparency to me needs to go above rhetoric. I'd like to see the details and I think this needs to be a mission if not added to the goals of our Housing Corporation.

If I could speak a little further on goals for only a moment. I think our goals, we talk about seniors and disabled and we talk about our sustainable housing for northerners, which are all well and good. But I'd also like to see us add goals where we're going to use an access or northern housing industry where possible, whenever possible. I want us to see as a goal that we tap into our labour market here in the Northwest Territories. I've mentioned many times that we do have northern manufacturers up here and I would like to see us use them. I had a Member's statement one day where I pointed out how great the windows were that I got in Hay River for my house here in Yellowknife. I think they're fine things. So I know we have northern contractors here in Yellowknife and Hay River and wherever else in the Northwest Territories that can provide good quality materials for everyone.

Under the side of modulars, I see problems here. I'm supportive of bringing the modulars into the communities, but I still see we have hurdles before us, such as land administration, land identification. We don't have people with the skills and the abilities to put forward these types of documents to do things like community planning, consultation. What do we do in the interim? We don't have modulars being delivered to communities because we have nowhere to put them. We have land tied up between the territorial government, such as Commissioner's land, and we have land tied up with the federal Crown lands. It makes it difficult, because I think going back to my first statement, which is about focus, it makes it very challenging. How do we put houses in communities when we don't have good quality land to put it on?

I would like to see the focus of the Housing Corporation to look at those little fine things that deliver houses to communities from the south of the lake to the north of the lake, all the way around it, that we need to get people into housing. I'm a firm believer that housing is one of the critical elements that create a stabilized home, which continue to perpetuate a stabilized atmosphere that lead to healthy living. Without those sort of key elements of shelters, of a home, I think life sort of slips from there on in.

Other Members had good points about what do you do and where do you go when they have gone to the housing program and they're no longer welcome. I echo those points because they were good, but at that point I want to just pull it right back to the transparency and re-emphasize that I think transparency under the EDAP needs to go a little further. I think when we lend money to people out there, again it's not asking too much because the public has confidence in us when we show and can justify why people got what they did. If we were lending them money through the EDAP program, it has steps, checks and balances that can be accounted for. Whether you like the fact that they got the money or not may be a different issue, but the fact is it can be justified and that's all the public is asking. That's all MLAs like myself are asking, is how do we justify it because we have to look those people in the eye, we have to take those phone calls about the transparency. So one of the steps that I'd like to see us address is the transparency area. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I didn't have a question there. They were mostly just comments. Thank you.