Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, will be speaking in favour of the motion. I was happy to stand my name as a seconder. I have been opposed to the transfer of the responsibility of the social housing to ECE since its inception. I have always thought it was not the right thing to do. It was going to create hardships for our residents and the clients of the NWT Housing Corporation. Indeed, the stories are many about people falling in
arrears because they did not understand the program. I believe even some people to this day are still in arrears because of this transfer. Because of the way the system is set up, it literally forced people to go from a $600 assessment to economic rent of about $1,200 to $1,400, Mr. Speaker. It was a shock to the system. People just could not believe that we, as a government, would do that.
When I was working with the Housing Corporation, Mr. Speaker, the very same people would go to the Housing Corporation. They felt it was a smoother transition. They knew how much to budget for their rent. Now it is left in the hands of ECE and their guidelines and policies, so they really don’t know what to budget for and they are at the whim of what they assess, Mr. Speaker. That creates uncertainty. That creates disharmony within their budgeting cycles, especially now when times are tough, Mr. Speaker.
I asked a question earlier in the House. What was the difference between assessing it when it was with Housing and assessing it now? I wasn’t able to get a clear answer, but I know the constituents know for sure. It was, I think, Mrs. Groenewegen who said it best. It was less intrusive, which means that they weren’t divulging all kinds of information and bearing their soul to program officers. It is because of the policies and guidelines. Whereas with the Housing Corporation, I believe there was some more flexibility. There was more trust. There was a relationship that clients had with the housing authorities. For me, it always made sense to keep it there. There is an issue of harmonization and one-stop shopping. To me it just doesn’t work. It was the flavour of the day back then. It seemed like the right thing to do.
I think it goes further than that too, Mr. Speaker. The Deloitte & Touche report of I think the year 2000 spoke about this harmonization of programs. I don’t know how or why it seems that we are still following some of the programming suggestions from that report. In fact, when they talked about creating one big infrastructure department, that comes from that Deloitte & Touche report. I don’t know how or why it is a major component of our bureaucracy that it is the best thing to do since sliced bread, but that is not always the case. I spoke about it in my Member’s statement. I believe in this case we took a southern solution, fit it up here to make it work, but it is just not working. It is creating more upsets than anything else.
The Minister spoke today during question period that their initial assessments were showing positive results, but that is something we have been asking for too, Mr. Speaker. Show us. Ever since we did a similar motion a year ago, they promised to assess the program and assess how it is working with ECE. The Housing Minister was going to get
involved in this assessment, but to date they haven’t given us any feedback at all. They were pretty happy today quoting some of their stats, some of their information and some of the internal assessments, letting us know that, to them, it is working, but they’re not sharing that with us.
At the same time, too, something of this magnitude in similar interests throughout all our constituents’ courses are the electrical rates. That is something I have been pursuing for some time as well, Mr. Speaker. I am glad to see that there is movement on many fronts and the most particular importance was getting out to the communities, getting the people’s input, and I know my constituents are looking forward to that when it begins in April. I believe that this issue is big enough to do something similar, Mr. Speaker, and to hear not only from us but to hear it from the regions and the communities and the larger centres as well. At the same time, Mr. Speaker, I am not convinced that it is working where it is at right now. I am not convinced that it is serving people to their best interest. I believe that it is not making life easy. That is why I support this motion. With that, Mr. Speaker, I will just conclude my statement. Thank you very much.