Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank the Member for the question. The process that we're looking at and that we've indicated in much of our materials that the new consolidated programs won't be fully operational until April the 1st, but taking that as said, it's important to note too that as we roll up to April the 1st we also anticipate answering many, many questions that we'll get from residents of the NWT. We anticipate beginning the process of looking at applications and in fact taking in applications from residents. Between now and April the 1st, we also are going to be focussing on a lot of education and training of our own Housing Corporation staff, be they district staff or headquarter staff, and familiarizing people throughout the Territories about the new program.
As we've focussed on in a number of our topics today and yesterday, one of the things that we really feel is important from a corporate perspective is improved communications and an improved understanding of people in the Territories of how our programs operate. With rolling out this sort of major initiative and taking the 14 programs and rolling them into four, it's even that much more important that we make sure that people in the Territories have a good understanding of what it is we're doing and how these programs can assist them. So between now and April the 1st, a lot of education, a lot of training and we think a lot of discussions with people in various communities as to how these programs operate and working on a community-by-community basis to get that information out there.
The Member also mentioned and brought up the issue of renovation and repair programs and the need for looking at how we can better do that in communities, and we would agree as well. We believe that the participation in communities is very, very important. Again, as far as we're concerned, community capacity building is very important in making sure that people in communities are aware, through programs such as STEP, of how they can be better tenants and so on and so forth, but it's also important that we look at ways of engaging the communities to improve community capacity building and have communities take a larger role in housing. In our view, it's the people in the communities that understand their housing needs probably better than anyone, and we fully intend to learn from their experience and have our programs reflect those needs as we understand them. Thank you.