Mr. Braden.

Stay on this page.

Stay on this page? Okay. Mr. Chairman, in the grants and contributions table shown here, and this is expenditures related to district operations and district operations means that working with local housing organizations and clients to provide housing and program options. So it's lands, development, maintenance, training and working closely with stakeholders at the community level. The total expenditure discussed in this neighbourhood, Mr. Chairman, was $37.8 million. What I would like to query, Mr. Chairman, is a reduction from last year's grant in this neighbourhood, which was $27.8

million down to about $23.5 million. So we're dropping about $4.3 million out of grants and contributions to district operations. That's a fairly substantial decrease and I'd like to ask for some detail as to why the reduction, or has it been picked up in some other area, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The $4,000-roughly reduction is because last year the Housing Corporation benefited by, sorry, $4 million, benefited by $4 million from the community capacity fund. That was only a one-time amount of money. As you recall, we gave $35 million to communities to be distributed, we gave $4 million to the Housing Corporation, $1 million was set aside I think for sports and healthy living and so on. So that was one-time money and that's why it doesn't appear this year. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Braden.

Okay. Thank you. Can the Minister give us a snapshot of where then was that $4 million invested? What is the evidence of the investment of that $4 million in housing then, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The bulk of that money, in fact I think all of it, went into homeownership units in the Supported Lease Program. That's where it was invested. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Braden.

Thank you. That's all for that page. I'll have a little bit more in the following page here in detail, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a short follow-up to previous exchanges I had with the Minister in regards to the situation in Wekweeti. I think the Members that were there saw a beautiful community. We were told that it's a rare community in the Territories, especially in regards to smaller communities, where most people who need housing have housing there. It's a community where it's quite traditional and I guess I'm a little surprised to hear that because those units are not public housing units that there isn't really a lot we can do to help those who may need some help to keep what they have. I think if you look at the bigger picture of the government's objective, which is to keep our people self-reliant and self-sufficient and this is the kind of place where we want to keep them succeeding. The fact of the matter is, this is not new, this is something that happens in many of our smaller communities where there are no services or very inadequate services available in terms of people, you know, they can't go and get a mechanic to fix their cars or a lot of things. Our community people are very self-sufficient in that regard, but you can't produce a doorknob or there are lots of things you just simply cannot do no matter how much you try. So why does the corporation not think of a way to help people who are living in their housing even if it is not public housing to help them fix that because there are simply not enough resources? I mean I think they did fly some technical people in, they tried to get some work done and they needed the Housing Corporation or they were told by Housing Corporation that they couldn't use some of the people that they had flown in, or I think in this specific case the lady who had her house frozen because she had to go away, there was extensive damage, probably where she could not afford to repair it herself. I'm wondering, in a general sense, wouldn't it be better off for the corporation to step in and help her out with maintaining the house she has, because we'll be doing far better than having her be homeless and all the problems that go with that, or that it happens that the house is damaged beyond repair. I mean that would just be really unfortunate if we ended up having that happen because everybody said well we can't do that or it's not within the housing mandate. I think it is within the housing mandate. I think there are lots of things we could do to help out, especially those who are already in the community with their own house, just help them out when they need it so that they could just keep on being self-sufficient. So I'd like to hear from the Minister, what's a way to fill that gap? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Certainly we want to keep people in homeownership and we want to help them maintain their programs. So we'll do whatever we can to help them. The direction, advice to the corporation is we'll do what makes sense. We're not going to say no, it doesn't fit this program or that program so we're not going to be able to help people. If it makes sense to help someone to repair their house because it froze up, then we'll do that. The people in Wekweeti have been talking with people in Gameti, for example, in looking at ways they can work together, because Gameti has more infrastructure and more capacity than does Wekweeti. So there are those things that the people are working on themselves as well.

I don't know if it's necessary for us at this time to help them with mail orders or that kind of thing, but I want us to do what we can to make sure that they stay independent.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Ms. Lee.

Just in the interests of closing this exchange on a positive note, could I just ask the Minister if he would have the district office person or a Housing Corporation person go in there and talk to the SAO and talk to whoever is in the position to assist in this manner and see what role the Housing Corporation can play in resolving that and what sort of step up program or something for the corporation to do to have the community continue to be self-sufficient without taking away anything from them? But I think it's a community that's quite self-sufficient and we just want to keep it that way by giving a little. I don't know if you could answer that.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair...(English not provided).

Mr. Chair, I'd just like to highlight what I've said in my language with respect to the district operation. You know, we have district operations in Yellowknife and regional operations in the regions. At the same time we have small communities that go directly to I guess the Yellowknife district office, such as the community of Wekweeti. Wekweeti has been brought up on several occasions here and I'm glad that the Minister has identified the need for the department to come out to the community, but at the same time, we were in the community with Mr. Anderson when he was there, acting president at that time. We took a whole bunch of pictures at that time too, but until this day we're still dealing with those issues that are still outstanding.

Mr. Chair, I think we, as the Tlicho Government, have been in operation for a year and a half and I've raised this issue over some time now as well. We like to see more empowerment in the community. When we talk about district office, maybe we wouldn't be going through this if we had Behchoko as a regional office. I understand Premier, as Premier of this Cabinet is and I guess will be working with his executive team because I've raised this issue already, but at the same time we have small communities that are left out in the cold with nowhere to turn to. This lady that Ms. Lee is referring to has been an issue for a while. It's not resolved yet and it's February, it's a cold month and everything is frozen up. That's not the only issue; there's other issues besides that in the community of Wekweeti where we have lots of single dwellings. I think there are four or five of them empty, due to the fact that there's a larger family now and they're moving out. Even though they move out, they don't know where to turn.

So those are issues that we need to deal with at the community level, but where do they turn? They call Yellowknife. They call me constantly. I've been after the department on that particular issue, but I for one would like to see the department going to the community, similar to what they're doing in Behchoko on February 22nd, explaining what we have to offer, the program itself and single family dwelling versus a family dwelling. There's a big distinct difference in the building itself.

So, Mr. Chair, I'd just like to close off with this, again, implementation stages we're at. When are we going to see changes in our region with respect to having our district staff in Behchoko that can deal with the three outlying communities plus the Behchoko community because we have a large file? We talk about arrears in the past, we talk about mortgages, we talk about housing itself. There's a lot of issues there and we can certainly deal with it at the community level if we had staffing in place, but, according to what I have in front of me, there's no staffing transferable to my region. So I would like to ask the Minister when is that going to occur, what are the plans in place to deal with that on the housing perspective? It's a real essential need. Although we have a local housing authority, they are limited, and the decision is being made from here as well in headquarters here. I'd like to see down the road, not-too-far-off distance, where a decision will be made at the local level within the Tlicho district office in Behchoko. That's what I'd like to pass on to the Minister about when. He also mentioned the staff of the district office going to Wekweeti. When is that going to occur?

So those are just some key issues that I wanted to address here, Mr. Chair. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, in responding to needs that are brought to our attention, I realize that just taking down the information and saying we'll get back to you is only half the problem. In fact it's a very frustrating one if they don't hear back from us. So we're working all the time to improve that. So when we say we're going to do something, we follow through right away on it. I don't know the person whose house froze up recently, but once we find out I'll follow up on that as well. So we'll deal with those ones as quickly as we can. We will have staff go into Wekweeti, district staff, as quick as we can. Of course, as we said, we're going in there anyway on the reorganization and consolidation of programs and hear what the people have to say.

On the decentralization of positions to Behchoko to be able to provide services into communities, I have some initial observations, suggestions from the regional director on my desk and want to have a look at them in terms of what it means for housing for staff as well. My intention was to bring this, as soon as I get a chance, to bring it to Mr. Lafferty and also to probably deal with this through the business planning process. But if there's anything we can do earlier, then I'm open to looking at that too, but probably through the business planning process is probably when we would do any kind of decentralization. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Lafferty. Thank you. We're on page 2-165, district operations, operations and expenditures summary, $37.818 million.