Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank all the Members for their comments on this very important matter and on this very important motion. Certainly with the transfer of this program from Housing to ECE there has been a lot of misunderstanding. We hear that the arrears have not changed, so that’s something I guess that could be proved by more of a review.

We do know that we are spending at least $1.5 million more to have it handled by ECE than we were paying for Housing to do the same program. We can’t really afford to be throwing dollars around

by the millions here. There are 14 positions. I suppose Members could have chosen to try to make the point by deleting some of the positions out of ECE, but we are not convinced that there is not value added in those additional functions that have been taken on by those income support workers. However, that does not mean that housing needs to be in their mandate to continue to have some of those income support workers at the local ECE and regional ECE offices at this time.

Let me say again that not every income support client lives in public housing and not every housing client is on income support. So I’m very glad to hear that transferring it back is an option. We’ve heard that from Minister McLeod, we’ve heard that from the Premier that it is an option. What we need to do is quantify the issues, validate, confirm what the issues are and then make an informed decision. Granted, a lot of what we hear as Regular Members does seem a little anecdotal. You, with the resources that you have -- or that the Members have on the other side of the House -- are probably in a better position to quantify some of the issues.

As to the comments made by Minister Lafferty about the survey, the satisfaction survey, I don’t know how scientific a survey like that is when you’re asking people that you’re giving income support and housing to, to say here, how would you like to do a survey on how we’re treating you. I mean, these are folks, I’m sorry, by the very nature of what they’re coming to see you about, who are a little vulnerable. So I’m not really sure how scientific your satisfaction survey is.

We have not criticized the income support workers today. I want to make that very clear. I did not hear one person on this side of the House stand up and criticize the income support workers. We are criticizing the government, if anything, for what we perceive is something that happened that should not have happened. They are just doing their jobs to the best of their ability in the environment that we have put them in. But let’s be very clear that nobody here is criticizing the income support workers.

Mr. Yakeleya likened this kind of rationale of this one-stop shop, let’s put everything together, kind of does give you deja vu on the whole board reform thing. Somehow we’re going to have these mega, all-encompassing, omni-offices that are going to deal with our people on all things. I think that is a wrong approach up here. As I said before, housing authorities, LHOs have a longstanding history in our communities of not only maintaining and ascribing rental units to people to meet their needs, but I think that the good work they have done over the years needs to be recognized as well.

Mr. Hawkins talked about the model is a good model, the problem is no one’s seen the model, not in its fullness of what was originally envisioned when this all started off. What we’ve seen is just a little portion of it and we’re saying the little portion we’ve seen we don’t really feel works very well.

How much would it cost? Let’s take that model a bit further and talk about that one window and co-locating. What are we going to do? Are we going to put housing over to ECE? I mean, my gosh, ECE is one of the biggest departments in our government. I think ECE has enough to do. I think ECE has enough stuff within their mandate. Housing in and of itself is a large issue. It’s a huge issue. It is at the very, very crux of the quality of life that people can possibly hope to aspire to in our communities. Having a home to go to is the very basic foundation of the quality of life for our people. Housing is a large, and I think should be, stand-alone issue. Someone said, if it ain’t broke...Or I guess the motto we want to say is let’s not break it. If it’s not broke, let’s build on what’s good.

Also, repeating Mr. Abernethy’s comments, there’s no shame in admitting that we made a mistake. I don’t know how much it would cost for things to revert back, but let’s not just take a position over there that if we say yes, you say no, we say black, you say white. Let’s get together. I don’t think this is going to be solved over a cup of coffee between Mr. Lafferty and Mr. McLeod and a quick conversation, but thank you for committing today to coming back to the Standing Committee on Social Programs. Thank you for the overtures which we’ve heard that said let’s find a solution together and let’s make sure that the people who need our support in our communities and who need housing are looked after in the best way possible.

Could I also please request a recorded vote?