Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to follow up on my colleague Mr. Menicoche’s comment on the housing for staff. I

am also very happy to see this in the budget and I am looking forward to the plan for how this will be administered, the strategy for allocation, in a way that will maximize the benefit from it. I am wondering, do we have a target, a number of homes or houses that we are trying to support with this amount yet. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.

Yes, Mr. Chairman. Our target is $1.5 million. We don’t have it all rolled out yet for presentation and we haven’t got as far as calculating how many houses this will build. That is going to be difficult until we start identifying the areas that we are going in, which communities we are going to work with first and the costing is different in each community. So this, I expect, will be an annual program that will be there for the long term. We are certainly not going to meet all the demands and all of the need out there with this budget, but we need to start somewhere.

Thank you to the Minister for those comments. Absolutely, I totally agree with him. I am wondering, I guess, is the plan to actually build the houses or is it to supplement the communities’ resources towards getting houses in place and sort of extending the benefit of this $1.5 million dollars. Thank you.

Thank you. I guess, in a nutshell, the program will probably…We expect will be designed to support communities to enter into loans or borrow the money from financial institutions and also provide some type of incentive. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Next on my list is Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am not sure where this question should be asked so I will ask it here and hopefully it is alright. We discussed during a review of business plans that the infrastructure, the way our infrastructure is determined within the government was being looked at, was being evaluated. Public Works and Services and the Housing Corporation were looking at possibly setting up an infrastructure department. I just wondered if there had been any progress on that initiative or the revamping of that structure since November when we talked about it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. As a note, pages 5-62 through 5-65 are related to infrastructure acquisition. The question might be more appropriate there, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will just ask for clarification from the Minister. When it says next year, does that mean implementation in 2010-11? Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, that is correct.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Next on my list is Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to ask questions on housing for staff as well. I have most of the Hansard as the people ask the questions. I guess I will ask about the Market Housing Program. I am curious about how the Market Housing Program...I am trying to figure out the difference between housing for staff and the Housing Program. Maybe just a little explanation on those to start with, please, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Minister McLeod.

Mr. Chairman, the Market Housing Program was set up so that we could buy a number of mobile units, waive the BIP policy on it and put them in the communities where there was a demand and have them available for operation by the LHOs and/or for sale. That was the design of it. I think we bought 42 units overall over a couple of years and then didn’t carry it out any longer. The housing for staff is more towards trying to provide incentive to communities, development corporations and businesses in the communities, band councils or municipal councils to invest into providing units for people that are in the workforce and, along with that, we would be looking at potential loan guarantees or some type of initiatives that we may be able to provide.

On the housing for staff, I guess I should just talk about my scenario. In both communities they have capable contractors or capable contractors can be brought into the community to build housing for staff. Would this budget be available for not only leveraging or financing, but also for providing equity to individuals? The problem with building staff housing is that your capital carrying costs are so high in non-market communities that is not feasible unless the staff is prepared to pay a large amount of rent per month. Usually these are rented to teachers who only need to rent 10 months of the year. It is

hard to go to the bank with a lease agreement that is for one year long and it is really in 10-month chunks. How does the NWT Housing Corporation hope to address that issue: high capital carrying costs plus a difficulty in obtaining a lease that will allow them to leverage financing? By “them” I mean the contractor.

It is difficult to answer that question. We are not completely done with our discussions with the executive. There are a number of issues that are potentially out there that we need to be very careful we don’t breach. There is a collective bargaining discussion going on. There are also other legal risks that we have to work out before we move forward. We would be glad to lay out the program design to the Members, hopefully in a couple of weeks, as to all the details and how we expect to move forward. Those areas that were raised by the Member are the areas that we are exploring right now.

The Minister touched on something here that I would like to explore a little further. On the collective bargaining issue, it has always been my understanding that it wasn’t a union issue in negotiating because if you are providing subsidized housing to someone in a non-market community where, like I said, it is difficult to provide staff housing for staff because of high carrying capital costs and so on and so forth, it is difficult to get contractors on. I am curious to know what type of actual collective bargaining issue this creates, because I can’t see how the people in market communities that are staff could possibly have an issue with this. I know that has been an outstanding hurdle that, obviously, we haven’t cleared yet. I am wondering if the Minister could explain just what the issue is.

That is probably a question better posed to the Department of Human Resources. The areas that are of concern under the collective bargaining are the issues of potential or what could be viewed as potential subsidy and the other issue is availability of units once we enter a program that may be required to be provided for everyone. So those are issues that need to be looked at and understood properly before we move forward.

I would just make a comment, not to the Minister of Housing but probably to the Minister of Human Resources. If this continues to be an issue, offer this benefit to people provided they are prepared to go into non-market communities. I could never understand how this was an issue. If it is considered a subsidy by people in non-market communities, or anywhere for that matter, then offer that to them provided they are prepared to work in a non-market community where

this type of subsidy viewed as a subsidy is being offered. Thank you. That is just a comment.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. We are on page 5-50 which is an information item, finance and infrastructure services, grants and contributions.

Okay. We are moving on to page 5-53, information item, debt repayment, operations expenditure summary. Mr. Yakeleya.