Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What I wanted to ask the Minister in this area is page 146 shows active positions, the allocation of staffing from headquarters and then to the seven regions. It shows that we are going to increase from this current to next year from 52 to 59 people in headquarters. I can't do the math that quickly, but the balance of people are in the regions. So we are going from 100 people to 117 PYs or active positions in 2007-08.

Mr. Chairman, Members will recall that we dealt with a lot of this in supps last year largely to enable the Housing Corporation to tackle a long and large problem with lands issues. I know that there are concerns about being able to find staff or employees with adequate skills that would enable us to get up to speed and do so quickly. So what I wanted to ask is, have we indeed filled or been able to fill these additional 17 new positions for April 1st, or what kind of challenges are we facing in terms of staffing now, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On this page, it looks like we are going from 100 to 117. It's actually 98 to 115. As you will note at the bottom, there are some part-time positions in there. In terms of full-time equivalents, it's 98 to 115. In headquarters there are six land and technical people to deal with the affordable housing initiative, plus one position is executive assistant to the president. That makes up the seven. Then there is 10 going out to the regions. As the Member mentioned, they are land and technical people. The corporation received money in November to begin this. Some of the positions are filled. We are going through a screening right now. In some cases, we are able to fill them with northerners. In other cases, we've had to go south because on some lands and technical people, we don't have applicants with that background to fill all the positions. Are we going to fill them? Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Braden.

Thank you. So did the corporation use...How much of the money that was allocated in the last supplementary appropriation to enable this, how much of that money was used up and how much is going to lapse for this current year, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, we got about $900,000 and we would have to calculate how much of that would be lapsing. I would say less than half.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't want to get into minutia. Are we going to be able to reasonably soon, reasonably quickly, staff up to the requested levels, the anticipated levels here, or are we going to be facing some chronic staffing issues in this area, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Will we fill the positions, Mr. Handley?

Our goal is to be fully staffed by April. Again, it's hard to predict. Of course, it's easier to staff in Yellowknife than it is in some of the regions. So that's always more of a challenge. Our goal is to have it fully operational by April.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was just waiting for my light to come on. I just wanted to take another swing at this. I will give it my best shot. Again, I really have trouble grasping or understanding how you could take $30 million from the Housing Corporation's budget, put it over at ECE, hire 14 people at ECE to administer that money and then look at this year adding an additional 17 positions inside the Housing Corporation. I know earlier it was mentioned that under the Supported Lease Program you don't have the staffing at the regional level to deliver the Supported Lease Program, so you actually have to contact out to get that work done. Mr. Chairman, something doesn't quite add up when I think about that. When you are running any organization, you try to make the best use of the personnel that you have and I don't know if you are doing that through this whole transfer of the social policy or housing policy and the $30 million over to ECE. I don't know if we have managed that effectively from a staffing level.

I guess that leads me to another observation or suggestion. I know the Minister has mentioned the fact that the new lands and technical officers will be term positions, but in our materials they are always shown as indeterminate full-time whether they are term or not. I think, going forward, we need to spell that out. If they are term positions, they can't be shown as indeterminate full-time in our materials. If that is not the case, then it's a misrepresentation of what you are proposing. You have said it yourself, they are term positions. Are they indeterminate or are they term? I think that's the question I have, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If we didn't have the $100 million affordable housing initiative, then we would not need 16 of those positions. But when you are almost doubling your delivery, then it is going to take more. So if we were to set that aside, you'd find that there isn't a huge difference.

The other one is with the LHOs. It was a fraction of somebody's time in each of the communities. It wasn't as if we could just take a position out of the LHO who did the rent subsidies and so on themselves. So we had to give them the means to be able to continue to be sure people had good quality housing and programs. We could not take positions away, so there was some creation of new positions there in Education. So it's always difficult with the LHOs who were probably overworked anyway at the regional levels.

Most of the accumulation of the growth is because of the doubling of the delivery by the Housing Corporation. In terms of these other positions now, the ones related to the affordable housing initiative, they are term positions. It's in the business plan as term positions. We follow a standard format in doing all the budget estimates. So you won't find in here any category for term positions. They are listed as indeterminate, seasonal, part-time and so on. If you go back to the business plans, you will find they are term positions. They will phase out when the affordable housing initiative is over.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Minister for that. I think that perhaps might be a suggestion on budgeting and something we can bring up with the Minister of Finance at a later date. I thank him and his staff for their patience and their efforts over the last couple of days. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Page 2-146.

Can we now turn to page 2-149?

NWT Housing Corporation, corporate summary, operations expenditure summary, $1.927 million.

There is no capital acquisition plan. Does committee agree that consideration of the NWT Housing Corporation departmental estimates have been concluded?