Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to, at the outset, say that I am in support of this motion and I will be speaking in support of the motion. I mentioned in my Member’s statement that I’ve been hearing the concerns about this particular transfer or change in program for over two years. Like my colleague Mr. Ramsay indicated, these are not new concerns that I’m hearing about lately. Sorry, these are not old concerns, these are new concerns. I’m not responding to complaints that are two years old. These are issues that have arisen for me within the last month, within the last two months, three months. They’ve been ongoing since I entered this office. It’s not an issue which has just surfaced.
We spoke to a motion almost a year ago now about the same issue. The previous Assembly spoke to the motion in November of 2006. One would think that by now, hopefully, somebody’s listening and getting a message that there is a problem, there is
a concern and we’re not speaking merely to fill this place with hot air, as CBC would have us believe.
A couple of things that I mentioned in my statement, one of them is that there is a lack of coordination. I feel that the complaints that I’m hearing are a lack of coordination between the two offices. People have two different places to go and it seems that the one office doesn’t talk to the other office or they don’t want to talk to the other office. People are not understanding that they have to go to two places to get their paperwork done, that they have certain things that have to be done with Housing and certain things that have to be done with income support. It’s very difficult for them. They’re also finding that the two offices have different ways of looking at things. The income support tends to look at subsidies differently than does Housing. It’s been mentioned that it has put a lot of people under the term “welfare” that weren’t there before. I think that’s something that, as Mr. Beaulieu mentioned earlier, it’s a matter of pride, it’s a matter of dignity, and I fully support his statement as he mentioned it earlier.
One of these things that these two different attitudes create when you have two offices looking at things differently, it creates problems and it creates confusion for people. They don’t understand the problem. The problem then tends to probably relate to a lack of understanding. People then don’t know that they have to pay their rent at a certain time or that they have to go and get this form filled out so that they don’t have to pay the full amount of rent. So that leads them to arrears. Well, the arrears, again, leave them in a situation where they’re not fully understanding of the situation that they’re in and it leads to eviction or the threat of eviction. I’ve had a number of calls that have been basically on a Tuesday somebody saying to me I’m going to be evicted on Friday, and it tends to go back to the difficulties of the one hand not understanding the other.
I’m understanding from my people that there’s a lack of understanding and management of the whole person or of the whole problem. Again, it’s the two offices are kind of looking at a problem piecemeal and not looking at the whole problem and the whole solution.
For me, from what I can understand, prior to the transfer, things were working and they were working well. It brings to mind the adage if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Well, I’m afraid that we did fix it and clients are bearing the brunt of a really poor repair job.
The other thing that I am having great difficulty with is we created new positions, 13 or 14 new positions, and we also added spending of $1.3 million to ECE to look after this new program. I
have yet to understand why either of those are needed. If Housing was able to do the job without those positions, why is that ECE needed an extra 14 positions and $1.3 million? That leads me to believe that we are unnecessarily spending money on this program and I’m willing to hear an explanation. I have yet to hear one that makes sense to me.
In my questions I’ve asked what benefits have accrued to the government, to the people, that weren’t there before with this transfer in programs, and I really didn’t hear any concrete items mentioned and no concrete reasons as to why, again, we made this transfer and what benefits actually accrued.
I’ll leave it at that. I don’t disagree with anything that other Members have said in support of this motion, Mr. Speaker, and I will be voting in favour. Thank you.