Mr. Chairman, it is a question, I guess, from the aboriginal government as to who owns the actual land. It would be relatively simply if everybody agreed that the federal lease would be in order, but in this case we are not getting that positive response from the band.

Mr. Chairman, I think Housing had scheduled a number of Affordable Housing Initiative homes to be constructed there. They were delayed. Is there still an opportunity to put those in place? Are the dollars still available once this land tenure issue is resolved?

Yes, Mr. Chairman. We have carried over I think 10 units because we are not able to settle the land tenure issue. That is still available. We will continue to work with the community to see if we could resolve it. But, Mr. Chairman, it is very difficult if the community refuses to acknowledge the federal lease, then we don’t have much choice. We are probably in a position where it is not going to be a concern because we have the ability to invest, carrying it over for some time may be quite challenging in the future. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for these comments. Do we know what the core need has been set at or recognized at in the recent past and where we are sitting relative to that for Ndilo and Dettah? Thank you.

We are checking, but I believe all our core needs, for the most part, our communities are at 30 percent except for Colville which is at 76 percent.

I guess I don’t have another question. I just would like to comment. I hope progress can be made on that file. If there is anything I can do as the Member for Weledeh to try and help out with that, I am perfectly willing to do that. I think my sense from constituents is the core need is definitely there for these communities. I would like to see that go forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I will go to the next person on my list. Mr. Krutko.

Just following up on Mr. Bromley’s question, I know that this issue is out there. I know there are ways that you could probably get around it. It is either have some land tenure for 30 years, we get a lease for 30 years subject that that land is in the negotiating process.

I know when we did land selection in the Sahtu and the Gwich’in area, they selected lands where the Housing Corporation had units on it. Basically it was subject to those lands that were IAB lands. We selected those lands but the Housing Corporation was aware that those lands did have that title on it. Once the claim was settled, then you knew which lands were which and either did a land swap in regards to those lands which taken over you either bought it outright or you basically guaranteed to a long-term 20 or 30-year lease with the corporation with the land owner, which now is municipal lands that are owned by the First Nations government. I don’t know why that is something that is a problem here.

We have the Hay River Reserve in the Northwest Territories where we are providing houses from the Housing Corporation on the reserve which is, if anything, a more restrictive process than the land claims process. I think there are ways you could work it through. But I think the cleanest way is just agree with them at the negotiating table, that the government take it to the table and say, look, we need land. You have 30 houses to build here. Is there a guarantee that we can build these units subject to a 30-year lease agreement and subject to the ownership remaining with the band through the claims process?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister McLeod.

I think times have changed. Historically, the NWT Housing Corporation was dropping houses fairly ad hoc and even on lands that we didn’t have clear title to or we had the rules that were quite broad. Three years ago we had the Auditor General lay down the law for us that require us to have, through the homeownership, a land tenure. Now they can either get that on IAB lands through the federal government or they can have their band acquire a lease from the federal government and sublease.

We thought we had a solution and we are not too sure if it is a workable one anymore, by having another third-party entity, maybe a trust corporation, to hold the land. That doesn’t seem to be realistic anymore.

Mr. Chairman, for us to have tenure, we need to have aboriginal governments agree to a federal lease. We have jurisdictions in the NWT that do not have a settled claim and are not willing to

acknowledge that the federal government owns the land and, therefore, not willing to subscribe to a lease. Now that really puts us in a difficult situation, because the rules that we have to follow require us to see land tenure.

I know this matter came up the other day at the Dene leadership meeting when the Premier was there. The issue was why couldn’t you give the money directly to the band to build houses for their membership and let them deal with the federal government and the land issue? At the end of the day it is their membership that needs these houses and they definitely need the units that were allocated based on core need. Is there a possibility that you get the band in Dettah and Ndilo and let them build the houses themselves through their development corporations and whatnot and give them houses that they need? Is that the possibility of going directly through those corporations either through the band or one of their corporate arms? I think, at the end of the day, it is either we do it, they do it, or somebody does it. Right now, nobody is doing anything in that regard and the people need these houses. It is one of the few last communities that haven’t taken advantage of the Northern Housing Trust money that was there. This was one of the hold-out communities. I think that if there are ways that we can get those houses built, give the money to a corporate entity or get them to establish a housing society or something, but do something. I wonder if he considered some of those other options.

We are trying to do something. We have a number of communities that are in the same situation. We are looking for options of how we can accommodate that. Our dollars come with rules. There are criteria. There are accountability issues. We have had requests from a number of band councils, aboriginal governments, to look at the concept of block funding. We are exploring that right now. We haven’t come to any type of conclusion whether that is doable or not.

Again, it is one of those situations where they are negotiating a claim. There is the process that they call interim protection. There are certain limits made in those interim protection agreements that people know going forward that, if you have lands and it is selected, it is going to be subject to change in regards to who will be the owner or the manager of those lands that you presently have a lease on or basically that you have a…and it does directly state in those agreements that IAB lands will be selected in those communities for those First Nations governments which are designated aboriginal lands. Again, it is something that…

In southern Canada, they provide housing on reserves. They provide housing in aboriginal controlled communities. They have Metis settlements in Alberta. They provide Metis housing in Alberta. I don’t know why we are not able to work around this. I know this issue did come up at the leadership meeting. They explored it. I think that it is an issue that should be resolved so that we can pack up the Affordable Housing Initiative and move on to the next $50 million.

There are two completely different scenarios in the sense that the southern jurisdictions are able to accommodate new units on their reserve lands and Metis settlement lands because there is a federal government that is willing to under write it by way of a federal loan guarantee. We don’t have that luxury here. The situation is in the communities in the Northwest Territories that are on unsettled lands. That, I guess, is a possibility for those jurisdictions to go to negotiate at the negotiating table, Mr. Chairman. I am not at the negotiating table. We can explore different concepts, but that would have to be something negotiated. We certainly can fly that by any of those jurisdictions, but I think that has already been looked at.

I am not sure if some of these communities are far enough along to get the ear of the federal government to start setting aside lands yet. Those are issues we certainly can look at again, but I think we already tested the waters on those fronts.

Thank you. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you. I have three questions for the Minister. The first question to the Minister is, he was responding to a Member here in terms of the core need, and he is correct on the 76 percent of core need in Colville Lake. He is very correct on that. The information I have is from the 2004 percentage. Deline is 41.7 percent, Fort Good Hope is 46.9 percent, Norman Wells is 8.5 percent, Tulita 35.7 percent. This is the information I received for 2004. With the funding that the Minister will be receiving on behalf of the territorial government to look at our housing across the Northwest Territories, and with what Mr. Bromley is discussing in his community of Dettah with the funding, is a portion of this funding with the vision of the Minister’s department...Does he foresee -- I know it is crystal balling -- bringing down these core needs that are high in the community? I know there are other core needs that are probably high in other communities, that I am not aware of, but these are ones that I picked out selectively for the Sahtu region. I think, is that the vision of this department, sorry, this corporation to bring this core need down to a level like Colville Lake, like 76? What we see in two years on Colville Lake, core needs will be

dropped down, I don’t know to what percentage, but certainly we cannot sustain 76 percent for too long. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. Minister of Housing

Mr. Chairman, that is our goal. The numbers are very much correct and our target is to bring the core needs down. They are all relatively high. Based on 2004 information, we have to remember that and we should have our new core need figures for review or for public release in early summer of this year.

Our target, our goal, is to get all the core needs in the communities down to the national average, which I think is around 12 percent. We are still a long ways from that. We have, or will have, spent well over a million dollars in the last couple of years on housing and housing repair. We need to see the core need numbers come down and I would expect that is what we will see.

Again, Colville Lake is very unique and very challenging to put units into that community. We will probably have to work with the MLA and the community leaders as to a strategy and community plan for that area. We can probably look at doing some home repair, but the types of houses, and houses that can be accommodated there, we have to finalize and figure out.

I certainly look forward to the new numbers that the Minister indicated. That will be coming out sometime this year in terms of core needs that I am using the 2004 needs, so it might not be too fair to the Minister and his department, but I think those numbers pretty well reflect the needs in the community. It is not fair to the Minister to give a proper answer until he sees the new numbers that are coming out this year and I look forward to that.

Mr. Chairman, the seniors facilities, and I am going to make another pitch for the seniors facilities in our communities that meet the needs. With the list of information that I have for Colville Lake 60 years and over, they have 22 elders. They don’t have any public units in that community, they are all privately owned. I certainly agree with the Minister in terms of the uniqueness and the challenge for construction of units in communities like Colville Lake, so that is one. In Fort Good Hope, there are 61 elders that are 60 years and over. Our numbers are high in the Sahtu with elders compared to, probably the same as other regions, so I would like to look at ways that we could look at facilitating new units for elders that would meet their standards and bring down the core needs, also, at the same time.

In this area here, I have looked through the corporate summary. I am very excited that the Minister indicated that some new units are being designed and looked at, and hope that is part of the corporate summary in terms of how we deal with units. I think it is a good move. It is one that would be supported by our region in terms of how you look at housing for single units and single families that are very basic and simple. It is almost like a trapper’s cabin, if you want to put a name to it. You have to learn some skills, you have to have some discipline to live that kind of lifestyle and that is what our elders have been telling us. The units that we have, our young people right now are being too used to, too spoiled, and they are depending too much on these units. We haven’t done any justice by teaching them what it is like to be self-sufficient, self-disciplined, in terms of having a unit. I am very excited. I know some of the smaller communities are probably happy to look at something like this. Some design that is affordable, with the help of some good people around the Northwest Territories, to show how to have an energy-efficient homes that they could rely on no matter where they live, in town or the community. They will have a sense of they could make it. So I am looking forward to some directive from the Minister in terms of how he puts together, with some discussion with this Cabinet colleagues as to what is affordable, what is reasonable. I hope we are successful in that.

Those are more comments, I know Mr. Chairman, in terms of the Minister, but I am very happy that he makes some mention of these issues here. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, again, I certainly agree with the Member. We have heard and we recognize that there is a need for probably a new type of housing design; a very basic facility, a very basic unit. Possibly something that could be built in the community. We are looking at ways to use this as an economic stimulus, whether it is log -- that is a question that we haven’t quite figured out yet -- stick built, and the other option that we are looking at for consideration is a modular. We have some communities that are saying we need units right now, so we are looking at all fronts, all angles. We will come forward with some possibilities.

Mr. Chairman, the Member raises public housing in the community that he represents, Colville Lake, and I think Mr. Menicoche also raised it for Fort Liard. Mr. Chairman, I also have, personally, one community in my riding that historically did not want public housing units and do not have public housing units in those communities of Colville Lake and Fort Liard. There is now a push to have those units. Our challenge is, in order for us to build a public unit, a public housing unit, we would have to take it out of our stock somewhere else, as we do not have new

money for operations and maintenance. It is something we have aligned ourselves in partnership in other jurisdictions. We need the federal government to sit down and listen to us, hear our arguments.

Mr. Chairman, this year, I think our reduction is $750.000 in the area of operations for our public housing stock and I believe it is 2011 that we are going to see a significant reduction of $3 million that is going to force us to do either of two things: either reduce, take some houses off the market or raise our rents. Mr. Chairman, we are quite concerned of where we are on this issue, because we recognize we are a couple of thousand public housing units short of what we need to really service all the communities, so we are going to need to be very creative and we’re going to have to be very convincing with the federal government not to pull out of the public housing subsidies that they provide for us. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Minister. Next on the list I have Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a brief comment. First, I heard the term “modular units.” I guess there were certainly initially problems with them meeting the EGH 80 guidelines, but I know that they were working on that and perhaps they’ve achieved that goal.

My question is on the Affordable Housing Initiative carry-over such as for Ndilo and Dettah. Given it’s for affordable housing, if we can’t resolve the land tenure situation in this particular case within a sufficient time frame, can those dollars, in fact, be used for energy upgrades to EGH 80 for existing houses in order to make housing more affordable in Ndilo and Dettah, and perhaps other communities that have a similar situation? Thank you.

Minister of Housing.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, first of all I should thank the Member for his office to help us try to come to some resolution on the issue. I should mention on the land issue we have put together a committee that involves MACA and CMHC and Indian Affairs, I believe, and ourselves to see how we can find our way through this. We are, of course, going to have to make a decision on the carry-overs at some point if we can’t resolve the land issue. Putting into retrofits is certainly an option. Any retrofits or whether it’s a modular unit we’re going to be putting together, that number that was asked about would have to meet the EnerGuide 80. So that’s something I want to reassure the Member is our goal and using these monies.

But I should also mention that through these new dollars that are coming forward and through this budget, we’ll see more investment targeted for those communities. So that pot is continuing to grow.