Thank you,
Mr.
Chairman. The issue of housing for
professionals is clearly a source of concern. As the Member indicated, we travelled around Nunakput, and it was raised in almost every community. We’ve offered up a couple of things. If there’s market housing units that are there that are available, we’re prepared to look at those. We’re also looking at the issue of loan guarantees so that we can work with hamlets or development corporations or businesses, to look at putting some houses in for professionals that are basically a business opportunity for the community. We’ve started working with Behchoko on a pilot basis. We made the offer in every community in the Member’s riding, in Tuk, Paulatuk, Sachs and Ulukhaktok. We’re committed to that process as well.
The issue of the hard-to-house is a challenge for us all. We don’t want people freezing to death in the wintertime. But the reality is, in many cases, these folks have had, in fact, more than one roof over their heads over the course of time and that their lifestyle choices often make it difficult even for their families to be able to be a support to them. So it’s a challenge to us all, which is why we had set up a
homelessness fund to deal with emergency situations like that.
The high cost of fuel and more subsidies is going to be one that’s going to require some discussion. We know that the Territorial Power Support Program is going to go up probably by another $5 million here in the next number of months. The price of fuel is something we don’t control at this point.
But, clearly, the cost of living in communities is high. The price of power.... How do we deal with fuel? Can we switch to biomass? Are there other ways, as we’ve talked about, in terms of changing the capital planning process with NTPC to bring down those costs? These are all things we have to look at.
We do have on the list, clearly, the units that the Member pointed out, with the doors freezing shut and having to use to a rope and a winch to open them up. So we’re going to follow up on that as well.