Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the transfer of the Housing Subsidy Program from the NWT Housing Corporation to the Department of Education, Culture and Employment was an idea that was hatched in the 15th Assembly
and it was promoted under the auspices or under the theory that putting all subsidies, whether it be for child care, seniors’ fossil fuel subsidies, like you think of every subsidy you can think of government-wide and it was this government’s intention under the Minister-of-the-day for ECE that we should harmonize all subsidies under one desk, one-stop shopping in the Northwest Territories. That necessarily included the biggest piece of the subsidy, which was the housing subsidy and the funds associated with the housing subsidy to transfer over to the Department of Education, Culture and Employment.
Mr. Speaker, that was the beginning and it has not worked out. I think it’s an idea that the Minister-of-the-day picked up at some national Ministers conference some place that this would be a good idea. You know, maybe it seemed simplified administratively, you know, in style, fashionable way for us to do this, but the fact of the matter is there is a longstanding history of the work and interaction in all of our communities by the local housing organizations who had tenant relation officers, who had the capacity in their offices to deal with their housing clients.
Mr. Speaker, this idea that all subsidies should be harmonized and should all be at one window in the
Northwest Territories, is the idea…I just lost my train of thought for one second. The idea is premised on the fact that everybody who requires social housing or the services of the housing authority are income support clients and that is absolutely wrong.
Not everybody was on income support who went to the local housing organization and got subsidized housing. But be sure now, Mr. Speaker, that we have made sure, as a government, that every person who requires social housing is now an income support client.
There is nothing wrong with being an income support client if you need to receive income support. Nobody is suggesting that is a bad or a disrespectable position to be in. It is income support. It is what it is. But there were many people working in our communities who felt like they were working and they may not be able to afford market rent and maybe there was not any private stock in some of the small communities to rent in the first place. They had to be the clients of the local housing authority. They had to live in social housing because there just wasn’t any option for them. That didn’t mean that they were not hardworking, trying-to-make-ends-meet people, but now we’ve said, no, you go over to the ECE. You go to the income support officer.
You subject yourself to the rigorous scrutiny of the assessment that takes place when somebody requires income support. I think it was a mistake. This idea of one stop never developed. It never evolved because, in all of our communities, we still have an office where there is an income support complement of staff or a staff member and we still have our local housing authorities. So the one-stop thing never materialized. All it did was put an administrative burden for those two offices to necessarily have to keep communicating with each other and have to send clients to not just one place but to two places.
Mr. Speaker, I think that this whole idea of this transfer was premised on something that was ill conceived. I don’t think the benefits have materialized. I think it has created hardship in many cases for people who maybe, for whatever reason, did not want to go to income support to get their rent subsidy.
If we could just project ourselves for a couple of minutes into a small community, someplace in the Northwest Territories. Pick any small community where there are not that many people and people tend to know a lot about what goes on in people’s lives in the community. Let’s imagine a young family. Let’s imagine a young man who is the provider in that family. Let’s say that he has been able, through either traditional lifestyle efforts and
maybe part-time work, to go out there and be able to proudly provide for his family. But he comes back to the community one day and our government has said, no, no. You now will go and join those other people in the community who have not been able, for whatever reason, to be able to maintain a work situation where they can provide for their family. You must go and join with everybody else now, and you must go over to the income support office and you must go to somebody that you probably know really well. Why don’t you just lay out everything; how much money you earn, what your fuel bill is, what your power bill is every month? You go there and you lay that out probably to somebody that you likely know very well. There is an intangible issue. I grant you that, but it is an issue of some degree of pride that people take in being able to manage to work and provide for their families. So we are saying no, you are now an income support client, and you will go there, and you will meet with that worker and, you will provide that information to them, otherwise you cannot live in our public housing unit. If you don’t go there, we are going to bump your rent up to what we call the economic rent, which is probably not even affordable. So people didn’t have much choice. So they didn’t go and then they were in arrears and into all kinds of other problems.
Mr. Speaker, that is just one small scenario of a case where I think that this transfer was not thought out well. I think it was, to some degree, and I had it put so well by one of my colleagues, that what we did is we turned every housing client in the Northwest Territories into an income support client in doing this. Like I said, there is no shame in asking for help and going to income support if you need it, but there were people who were managing and there were no choices but to rent from the Housing Corporation through the Social Housing Program. There was not a choice.
Mr. Speaker, I will defer now to other members of the Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning, from which this motion evolved, and ask them to speak to this motion. I will wind up the communication or the presentation on a motion. Thank you.