I support the motion that’s before us today, like I supported the motion that the last Assembly passed in this House calling on the government to return social housing policy and the money back to the Housing Corporation where it belongs.
I’ve got constituents, too, who have a great deal of concern. I know my colleague Mr.
Menicoche
outlined some of them. The assessments are taking too long.
As I’ve said before, one of the most bizarre things I’ve seen, being a Member of this House, is how this all happened in the first place. I think what happened was the Minister went to an FPT meeting, saw some of the provinces going to the one-service delivery model — Ontario, New Brunswick — came back to the Northwest Territories and said, “Hey, we can do that here.” So they started on a course to pull the money out of the Housing Corporation and it was pulled. I don’t know if the Housing Corporation necessarily agreed with having that money pulled at the time, but it happened. We even went to the extent….
There was partial-year funding in a sup that Members on this side of the House pulled out of a Supplementary Appropriation. It was $440,000 at the time. That didn’t send the message; the government was still intent on hiring what ended up being twelve people to deliver the same program that was being delivered at the Housing Corporation, so it’s costing the government an additional…. Not only is it not serving the needs of our residents, it’s costing us an additional $1.5 million to administer every year.
So, Mr. Speaker, again, I think…. And not only that cost, but just recently we were briefed by EC&E on how they’re trying to massage this and trying to make it work. There’s a lot of time, effort and money being spent on consultations, going around talking to people…. Listen, it doesn’t work. What else do you have to know? It doesn’t work, Mr.
Speaker, and it needs to go back to the
Housing Corporation, where our residents can have some peace of mind that assessments are going to be done in a timely fashion and that things are going to be done appropriately. Right now, that peace of mind is not with our residents. Let’s take the program and put it back where it belongs.
Mahsi.