Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Anderson.

Thank you, Mr. Anderson. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I've already referenced this whole issue of the Rent Supplement Program. I have a document that I have provided to the Housing Corporation at a previous briefing. I don't know if they have it with them, but I did have a few questions on the Rent Supplement Program. I didn't have this document in front of me when I asked the questions the other day, and I still don't have all the information that I want and I just want to ask some general questions about the Rent Supplement Program, if the Housing Corporation has the same information at their fingertips. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Anderson.

Thank you, Mr. Anderson. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you. Just for the benefit of the record then, the Rent Supplement Program costs the NWT Housing Corporation a total of $4.113 million a year, and change, and represents contracts with, it looks like approximately 28 different proponents. The leases are anywhere from five years, pretty much at a minimum, to 20 years. I just discovered one here today and it looks like it's for 35 years here in Yellowknife. So I asked this question before, and I guess I wasn't completely happy with the answer. I don't know if we're going to get through the NWT Housing Corporation budget here today without any deferrals, but I would like to see the results of this

analysis that the Housing Corporation has agreed to undertake. As I stated before, even the ones that are 20 years have a five-year term attached to them. Now, understandably, it may not be possible to end the contract on the five-year renewal dates. Perhaps that is a day at which an escalation clause, or a negotiation is considered. But it's my understanding that the terms of these leases continue to be extended and negotiated with these proponents. I guess $4 million is a lot of money, and it would just be nice to know that there is good value for money. From the information that I have in front of me, it indicates total annual payment; it doesn't indicate -- and there might be a lease -- but it doesn't indicate how many units, what size of units, things like that. So I would like to know when the Minister said that he would provide an analysis in February or March. I want to know if the Minister would actually provide an analysis of this, with more detailed information, prior to the end of this sitting which is essentially the end of February, before this House rises. If the answer to that is yes, I would like to suggest that for this reason and a few others, that the conclusion of the NWT Housing Corporation be deferred and not decided on today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Anderson. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we will be going through information in the budget in regards to information items, and I think that's where this discussion should take place. I think in order for us to get that information to the Member prior to the end of this session, we can't commit to that. I think a lot of the information that's here now is in the budget, so if we can get into the budget and deal with this information, it's in the budget and speak specifically to the budget. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I mean, we could carry on here, I guess, and I could carry the ball on a whole lot more general comments on the NWT Housing Corporation. I still have a lot of questions here. Granted, some of them could perhaps be covered off by the information items. I'm only one vote and I'm only one voice, but my preference is going to be to not conclude the NWT Housing Corporation in today's sitting. So I'm not sure if that needs to be brought forward in the form of a motion, or in terms of process how that will be dealt with. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Braden.

Mr. Chairman, to Mrs. Groenewegen's point, it's a good one. I also agree that I am not prepared to conclude the Housing Corporation today, but I think there will be benefit, we can go through the page-by-page detail here in which there, yes, indeed, other aspects that we would like to query. But the final conclusion of the corporation's appropriation, yes, I, as well, want to defer until later in our budget session. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. So is it committee's wish then...I think we have a motion that I think is going to be passed out. Is it committee's wish to go page by page, or is it committee's wish now to defer consideration of the detail until later? Page by page?

Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you. My difficulty, Mr. Chairman, is that I still have a number of issues, and when I look at the information on the page by page, unless somebody helps me, I'm not really exactly sure where they all slot in. For example, I still want to talk about land administration issues; I want to talk about the issue of some of the...I want to talk about the number of units of empty and abandoned Housing Corporation units that are in the communities that are obsolete, not being used, not being repaired. I'm not really sure exactly which information item these fall under. So I'm just telling you what my difficulty is with that. I want to talk about consultation with LHOs, what role they play in terms of the direction that headquarters takes on a lot of these things. So do you want me to just guess at which page they're on, or...Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. No. My suggestion would be that we stay on general comments until they're done. If Mrs. Groenewegen has general comments, and other Members have general comments, we exhaust that until we're ready to go into detail. So now we're still on general comments. Mrs. Groenewegen, general comments.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. To the issue of some of the things, then, that I just listed off. When a person visits the communities, you can't help but notice there are a lot of vacant units within communities. I'm not really sure who owns them; however, I highly doubt that they're privately owned. They look like they might have been housing units from some previous era, because they're of a different kind of design and, for whatever reason, have been left. They are, for one thing, unsightly. They are targets for vandalism. But some of them may be available to people. They could fix them up if they were given access to them, but it seems that they've just been abandoned. So I'd like to ask the Minister if he has an inventory or could give us a bit of an idea of how many units the NWT Housing Corporation has right now in their possession that are unoccupied. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, presently we have 138 vacant units. In most cases, those units are vacant for reasons of repairs. Also, like I mentioned, they are in the process of having to use the O and M dollars for a lot of these units to transfer over to our newer units and that is a practice that has been going on in the communities. Because we don't have the dollars to pay for the operation of our newer units, we are having to shut down housing units and the money that is expended on that unit is transferred to the newer unit once we have them in place. In most cases, they are vacant because they are being repaired or are in a repair program.