Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There have been many comments made today in regard to the motion; many examples of concerns about housing across the Northwest Territories. In fact, there are a number of Members here who have been around for quite some time and have heard, whenever we’ve gone to communities, probably the two most commonly raised issues when we go to communities is housing and health care and then probably followed by education. Those are commonly raised and have been since I was first elected in 1995, and continue to be even on some of our more recent trips. The fact, I think if we look back at Hansard of previous Assemblies we would see much discussion about housing, about arrears, about programs, the level of service provided in communities. There has been quite some time spent on that. In fact, I think we can go back to the Hansard and see when there were calls for past audits by the Office of the Auditor General on the Housing Corporation proper and how it delivered the programs that it was in charge of.
There has been much talk about this change that has been four years in the making. The first year was purely a financial change between the Housing Corporation and Education, Culture and Employment. The second year is when they started actually transferring program operation between the two departments. Yes, Members have highlighted that the implementation of that definitely raised many concerns in our communities, and how that flowed and continued to a certain degree in today’s environment. That’s why both Ministers have highlighted that they are going to work together to come up with a report and work with Members and, if allowed, would be looking at what options would be available. If in fact the options come back clearly that this is not going to work in this environment, then we would have to look at reverting back to a different process or original process.
Before we make the decision on that let’s recall past work done in the area of the Housing
Corporation. In fact, the Office of the Auditor General just filed a report on the NWT Housing Corporation public housing and homeownership problems in February 2008. It was based on a motion of the Legislative Assembly of the day of March 2nd , 2006, that referred to the Housing
Corporation and its operations. A response in that report, in a response to the motion made March 2nd ,
2006, the Auditor General reported the corporation needs to improve its monitoring of the LHOs’ financial reporting against plans and assist those LHOs that have accumulated deficits. Further in there it also stated that action is needed by the corporation to improve the collection of rents by the LHOs. So it shows that there are ongoing problems in the whole area of housing, rents, how the programs are operated, the monitoring that happened. In fact, I think if we again look at Hansard, there was much agitation of the Members of the previous Assembly. In fact, there was much frustration with the Housing Corporation and the Minister-of-the-day in looking for solutions at that time. Things turned out differently and, in fact, we’re now finding again concerns about this.
The Ministers have confirmed that we will look at this, work with Members, hopefully give us the time that we can get a good response back to Members and look at the options, even if that means reverting back to the old system. But again, as both Minister Lafferty and Minister McLeod pointed out, we need to take a good look at this process and if it means an independent look at it, then let’s do that and let’s put the energy in before we scrap the whole program, because history shows this is an issue, it continues to be an issue, and going back to the old program where the Auditor General reviewed past operations. Will that continue without change? No, we need to make some change, and that’s what we’re looking for here.
As well as convention, being that it’s a recommendation, we’ll be abstaining from the vote and looking to Members for their work with us.