I do apologize, Mr. Speaker, and to the House. I did make reference to the document, Mr. Speaker, that these people who are living in these small communities, like my region and social housing, have basic difficulties in the Housing Program. These students speak very passionately how it does affect them in their health, in their financial realities. These young people, who have young families, who their partners are going out and getting jobs and who want to make a financial contribution to the community, to the families, are struggling, that the housing rent is still being a situation where they can’t afford to buy furniture, buy things for their children. With limited access to roads, they won’t be able to buy airline tickets. My understanding is, on Canadian North, from Norman Wells to Yellowknife and back it is $1,200. That is a return ticket. They need to get out on the winter road and to be able to come down to Hay River or Yellowknife and see that they could buy some groceries here. They mostly go to Hay River, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, these young people who are in the communities write about the situation of the houses that they live in, situations that require some basic types of services by the Housing Corporation. Because now we are into a different one-stop shop concept and we are losing sight of the basic needs in our housing here.
Mr. Speaker, it has been said in 2006 on November 1st that the rationale for this move here is not being
understood by the Members. Communities are suffering because of our move. Again, when this was brought up, in theory it sounded very good. In practicality, it is not working.
Mr. Speaker, with this motion here, I certainly hope that the government takes a hard look at it, looks at where they can improve their services. It has been four years since they implemented this program, but according to my phone call this morning in regards to these two documents I have with me, there are some major disconnects -- Education, Culture and Employment and Housing, major disconnect -- with the people in the communities who are affected by this. We have not done a very good job in terms of selling it to them and having them buy into this process here. I wonder where the federal government is in terms of this. I think we should really think about this when we are going ahead, because the federal government in 2038, according to the document, is out of social housing. They are offloading to the territories and provinces. We are going to be responsible for social housing. Every year the funding is going down until 2038.
Mr. Speaker, I go back to some of my aboriginal elders who talk about housing that was promised to them by the federal government or the government-of-the-day. Those elders here still don’t have a strong belief of these verbal agreements that were put in place when the federal government asked them to move into housing. These agreements by our elders, the verbal agreements, are not documents, so sometimes it has a very difficult time towards making it into what the federal government has said.
When I was doing my research on the housing, somewhere in the agreements with the federal government with the aboriginal housing issues there was a guarantee by the federal government that aboriginal peoples with native ancestry would only be paying up to 25 percent of their household income for shelters. Somewhere we lost that agreement there.
With all this complexity and the issues that come before us, Mr. Speaker, we have somehow lost touch with the people. Somewhere along the way we are not on our agenda, I believe. I believe there is a bigger picture out there that somehow we are going to be paying for this if we continue doing what we are doing. I think our services to people who are in social housing, people who are receiving support through the subsidies that the government has to offer, are going to be worse off than ever we want to in a way that we want them to be better. They are going to be worse off in terms of how we are going to help them.
Mr. Speaker, I will be supporting this motion to see if the government here will have a change of heart in looking at this program here. Do the right thing and give it back to the Housing Association. Thank you.