Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Like I
said in my Member’s statement at the
beginning of today’s proceedings, I’ve got six small communities in my riding, and we’ve got many, many housing issues. Every time I travel to the communities, my constituents come to me, and they’re concerned about their program or if they’re being approved or about their housing and home repairs and even the condition of the homes. There are mould issues; there are construction issues.
The way I see it is that what they’re actually doing is that, because they’re not getting satisfactory answers from the Housing Corporation, they’re actually approaching me and appealing their needs because they aren’t being heard. I convey those issues to the housing department, and I’m sure the Minister can attest that he’s got many, many inquiries from my office to his on many, many follow-up issues. The latest is seniors being delayed by over a year in the delivery of their repair program. In fact, they had to move out of their home for almost a year.
To me, one of the solutions is about getting an appeal-type system, something independent. I’ve
conveyed this time and time again, Mr. Chair, that the constituents and the Housing Corporation clients are not satisfied with their answers. They’re appealing to the district office, to the people that told them no, so they’re going to get the same answer. That continues to happen. There’s no appeal system, no independent appeal system.
I think that one of the examples that constituents talk about is the ECE system — Education, Culture and Employment system — where they have an independent appeal system. When a client is written a letter, even if it’s a negative letter…. Sometimes approvals do happen in our government, so it’s not always a negative. But in any of the correspondence of the clients, at the bottom of the letter….
Interruption.