Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I’d like to say thank you for the comments Members have made, the suggestions, observations. Certainly I think everybody is very interested in the new federal funding that was highlighted in the budget. We still have to firm that up. We have a number that has been given to us as an indication of what the dollars are going to be flowing to the NWT. We expect to have those signed off in a couple of weeks and have that presentation to the standing committee, along with
a number of other initiatives that were raised today that we are looking at making some changes, enhancements or introducing.
A number of questions were raised regarding the new money around how we would match the funding. We already have the dollars in our funding that we would utilize as matching funds. This would give us roughly a $52 million per year investment that we would be moving forward on. Right now, the general idea and our thinking, after listening to the Members over the last while, is to start doing some upgrades in the area of public housing stock, upgrades in the area of energy efficiency and also allow people to access dollars for private home repairs. Of course, we would try to continue with the Homeownership Program, but I think there is a little bit of a shift. I mean, all this will be presented to committee for discussion and we are expecting that as we move forward, that our core need will be done sometime early this summer for 2009 and that will indicate, after spending the last investment by the federal government into housing of the Northern Trust that we will see a decrease in our core need. There are still many areas where we need investment.
I mentioned in the House the other day that public housing is still an issue. We have money for infrastructure and there has been no real investment for some time in the area of operation and maintenance for these units. That is a challenge that we have to deal with the federal government on, along with other jurisdictions.
The other issue that was raised today was housing for staff. That’s something that we have put in our budget, $1.5 million, as a place marker to try to deal with the communities that are really struggling to find accommodations for people that are in the communities working as teachers, nurses and other areas. That is something we are working with the Executive on and the Refocusing Government committee and we’ll be bringing those results forward.
There was also a mention regarding the ability or inability of getting people in the communities to do evaluations in the area of energy. Arctic Energy Alliance does a lot of that work right now for us and for people in the communities. We’d like to see our staff start taking on some of that, playing some of that role, staff that are in the communities more and be able to advise people and do some of the testing that is currently being done by other organizations. That might help alleviate some challenges.
That is the same with the mould issues, Mr. Chairman. We are training all of our staff to be able to provide advice, to do the testing, and also advise how to remedy the situation where there is mould in some of the units. The seniors maintenance
program was raised by several of the Members here. We have changed our seniors program somewhat so that seniors can qualify just the same as any individual that is applying for assistance. We have removed any of the caps on home repair so that seniors can come and do more than just the $8,000 that we had budgeted historically. They can now qualify for up to $90,000 to do home repairs. We have also carved off some dollars to introduce a seniors maintenance program. We are going to be looking at putting $2,000 or budgeting $2,000 per community so that we can have some mechanism for communities to help their seniors, whether it is furnace cleaning or repair, or water tanks, things of that nature that is really challenging our seniors right now. It will be a general maintenance, and we expect a lot of communities will be hiring private companies or being delivered through the band councils or things of that nature.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Yakeleya raised an issue that has been challenging us for some time. That is the potential to put homeownership units in the community of Colville Lake. This is a small community, an isolated community and doesn’t have any roads and up until lately, didn’t have any running water. It has really been a challenge to find people that would fit the program design of how we bring forward homeownership units. They are a unique community, as the Member has raised, and we expect that we would have to find private, or a special design to accommodate them. We would also have to look at how we could set up a unit that would fit in a budget that they could afford.
We have other communities that have a number of people that are being challenged with some of our programs as some of the people in the Northwest Territories don’t have a credit rating, so we need to be able to accommodate that. We think by designing a fairly basic unit that would fall under the grant that we would provide or forgivable mortgage that we would provide will be able to assist them.
Mr. Bromley asked about the investment in energy upgrade and he pointed out the million dollars that we have in revenue, which is correct. That is the revenue that will be coming into the revenue pot. However, we have earmarked $8 million in MNI expenditures that will be focussed on energy. We have committed that we will follow the EnerGuide 80 and that will go to all our units, whether they are new or they are being retrofitted. That is a standard we have set and we will be incorporating that in our program.
The $69 million is all the revenues that are identified in this budget as other revenue. There was a question about cost-matching and that has already been accommodated. Mr. Jacobson raised the question and the concern about -- you know it is in his riding -- the condition of some of the public
housing units, and we certainly recognize and have heard from them, and we still expect that we will be seeing a petition from those communities regarding the status and the situation with our public housing units in those communities and the number of new units that are going in there. As we go forward, we will be doubling our budget in renovations in that area. So with actual change, we will certainly be interested to see and hear specifically what Mr. Jacobson has raised.
Our budgets are based and allocated on core need and in this case, because we don’t have our new budget or our new core need analysis done yet, we are still working on the 2004 assessment. Next year I expect we will use this new assessment as it comes forward early this summer.
We share Mr. Jacobson’s concern regarding the office in Paulatuk. We have been looking for someone there and we would really like to staff that position. Capacity is always an issue when it comes to the smaller communities. We hope that is going to happen fairly soon.
Mr. Chairman, the other issue regarding expending all of our dollars that we have earmarked, what is in this budget and what is coming forward from the federal government, we expect will be done within two years. We plan to have it done in two years. We will, as I said, bring a plan forward for investment. Mr. Beaulieu is quite correct in saying that if we spend all the money and we get the units on the ground and do all the retrofits in two years, we would be eligible for any other jurisdiction’s dollars that have lapsed. Up to now we are the only jurisdiction that did match the federal investment and we are, I think, the only jurisdiction that is able, once we do this last year in our housing trust money, we will be the only jurisdiction that has been able to do that. We hope that in year three we will be able to trap any of the surplus money that is lapsing in other jurisdictions.
I am really quite excited to hear that there is some discussion about community planning around housing. That is something that we really need to encourage. We think dollars could flow better. We think people would understand better what the strategy is and information could get out there better if more people were involved and more people were sharing the management decisions.
The issue of thresholds is another that we have, over the last while, heard many Members raise. We plan to look at that when we do our housing choices evaluation. We will be doing that shortly and we hope that will result in changing the thresholds. We recognize that it has been challenging over the last couple of years as we introduce our programs, for some people to fit in the window that we have identified and the criteria that we have set. We
would like to be able to open that up. We do have, still, a number of vacant units and I think the number is at 21 units right now across the Northwest Territories. We are hoping that by opening up the thresholds, changing the thresholds, opening them up and changing the criteria, we will attract more people. We are certainly getting that indication from a lot of the Members in this House.
We have heard that also from the Small Communities committee when we talked about housing. We are also looking at the amount that is given as a contribution or forgivable mortgage, which is a maximum $90,000 and given some of the costs of construction in the more northern part of the NWT, where common three-bedroom houses are up to $300,000 dollars, we may have to look at seeing if we can find a number there that is a better fit.
We do still provide contributions of up to $25,000 for some of the people that are on IAB lands and people that don’t or can’t attain land tenure, so land is still an issue. We are working on resolving some of these with the band governance and especially issues on IAB land. Mr. Chairman, I think everybody is aware now that the Housing Corporation is not allowed to move forward and build, provide mortgage or any type of assistance unless we have land tenure, and the Auditor General had raised this.
Mr. Chairman, we are also really having a difficult time with the number of people across the Territories that are in arrears to this government through land tax or property tax and I think it’s got to be clear that we are not allowed to make an exemption. This is an issue where there is an arrears for taxes and that has to be cleared up through a recovery plan or some type of arrangement with this government before we can do anything.
The housing for staff, as I indicated, is something we are still working on. We are hoping that will get rolled out fairly soon. Our core needs, again this is going to be summer 2009, the allocations in a couple of weeks, we’ll present that to committee along with the other initiatives that we are working on.
We are also trying to find a new design unit as a result of Colville Lake, but other communities have also indicated that they would like to see us come in with a new unit. We are not sure what it will be called yet, but we are looking at designing something that would be very basic. It might be a traditional housing package or something that is very simple, very easy to heat, maybe woodstove and electric cook stove and very little else that we can put in communities that would meet some of the needs of the singles, some of the smaller
families that just don’t fit in the category to take on a mortgage. So that’s something we will continue to work on.
We will also continue to provide programming for seniors in terms of seniors’ housing. Our focus is on independent seniors that can maintain their units. With a little bit of care, they continue to live on their own and we want to encourage that. Somebody, I believe it’s Mr. Krutko, raised the issue of trying to work better with the co-ops, now that we have some money, to help them with some of their challenges. That is certainly something we will look at.
The Joe Greenland facility was also raised and the question was asked about when we were going to do it. That was a contract that went out to bid and resulted in the bids being quite a bit higher than we had budgeted for, so we are seeing how we can accommodate the repair that needs to be done.
Mr. Chairman, somebody also raised -- I believe Mr. Krutko -- the issue of NOVEL housing and workforce housing. It’s not something that we have high on our priority list, Mr. Chairman, but the issue or idea of modular units is something we will keep an eye on especially if we get behind in investing or getting all the units we need to put up in the next couple of years. So it’s something we will put on the back burner, but it’s a consideration.
The issue of expanding the workforce is certainly something we agree with. The trades in communities are getting harder and harder to attract and having some people who are trained within communities is something we want to do. We embarked on an Apprenticeship Program and so far we’ve identified 12 positions for apprentices and we’ll try to keep that as a program ongoing and maybe even expand it.
Mr. Chairman, in Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche has highlighted the concern of many people not understanding the programs since we’ve introduced the new housing choices. Since this fall, we’ve really tried to embark on getting the information out there. We’ve launched a public campaign. We have staff from our regions going into the communities to have communications shared with the community members, public campaigns in the communities so that people know when the deadlines are, what the programs are about. We are trying to remove some of the misunderstandings. We are also putting ads in the paper so people know when the deadlines are, when they need to come forward to apply.
Mr. Chairman, there was a concern raised by Members regarding the ability of members or community members to come forward and access some of our programs because their history has continued to be a concern. We have a long list of
people that have arrears. We have a long list of people who have done damage or abandoned their units. We do try to work towards accommodating people that are willing to patch up what is not allowed in applying for a new program. Recovery plans have been put in place for a number of people who are really trying to either turn their life around or put themselves back in the good books of the Housing Corporation. We really appreciate that; however, we still have to stay firm. We have a lot of people coming and asking for exemptions. Just write off what I owed for the last 10 years and stuff of that nature. We, as a corporation, are going to stay fairly firm on that. In order to encourage everybody to pay their rents and pay their mortgages, there has to be a demonstration that we aren’t just going to open the door every time somebody complains a little bit too loud.
Mr. Chairman, there are quite a few things that we need to come forward to committee with that, as a new Minister -- I think I’ve been in this position for eight months now -- I’ve heard from Members of this House in different committees and we’re hoping that some of these things we’ll be able to share relatively quickly.
The other thing was we also wanted to have further discussion that we committed to on the appeal system. We are hoping to get our stamp of approval from committee and kick it out the door by April 1st .
So there are a number of things that we need to expand on but we are still working on. We had hoped to have everything in place by this budget session, given the sense of urgency that came on the Building Canada Fund, and the need to do the correspondence and have the discussions with the federal Ministers has kind of slowed it up, but we are still working on these issues. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.