Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be voting in favour of the motion. That is something that my constituency and residents of my constituency have always said, is that when they go to apply for NWT Housing Corporation programming, often they are saying they are making too much. This frustrates Nahendeh residents to no end, because the reality is that there are dual income households out there. There is a good reason for that, Mr. Chairman. It is only because they are trying to address their high cost of living and they are working hard to achieve those ends. A lot of them, too, are not only...Well, the majority of the workforce in my riding is, of course, government, but a lot of them are in the private sector. A lot of them are business owners. For them, too, the guidelines kind of discourage them from using our program.

We just had a discussion earlier with this department about the ability to recover rent and revenue from Housing Corporation clients. If we are looking for new clients, Mr. Chairman, and looking for stable revenue, then who better to approve for our programming than somebody that does have a steady income, maybe dual income? These are the people that want help and we should be helping but our current policy dictates that our community income thresholds are a certain range. I cannot believe that range is so small. I know that people are being turned away or denied. In some cases they know they make too much so they don’t even bother taking an application. That frustrates me too, Mr. Chairman, because everybody is entitled to due diligence. I believe that applications should be taken.

I would like us to have a good look at it. In fact, I am expecting that this motion will pass, Mr. Chairman. I would like to see it effective April 1st . We have a

new cycle of programming that is going to happen come April 1st , new people applying. Many of them

are actually the same people but at the same time there are dual income families out there, and they could be single as well but they are exceeding the threshold. This gives them the ability for us to deliver our housing programs right now. That is a fact that we are building houses but nobody is qualifying for them, Mr. Chairman. This is one of the reasons; you either make too much or else you make too little. We have to expand and increase the range of the income threshold and allow more of our people to access these programs.

I think one of the frustrating things is in the communities, people walking by empty units. They have been empty for about a year and knowing that they almost qualified or else they didn’t qualify

because they made too much but they are staying in overcrowded situations and their own homes. Maybe it is their children or cousins that may now be allowed to qualify, thereby increasing or lowering our frustration about overcrowded homes. That is why I will be voting in favour of this motion.

I would just like to say to the Minister and to the government that, look at implementation date of April 1, 2009. It is a policy change. It can be done. That is something we really should look at doing immediately and I sure hate to have government just take it under advisement, Mr. Chairman. That is something that is important. It needs action. I believe that we should get action on it. Thank you very much.