Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Daniels.

Thank you, Mr. Daniels. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can the Minister give me a breakdown of how much has been spent out of the $33 million for rental subsidies?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. We don’t have the detailed information that the Member is referring to, but I can certainly make a commitment to provide that information in detail to the Members.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. We’re on page 10-27. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I had a question for the Minister here. The Standing Committee on Social Programs has met with the Minister with regard to income security issues and particularly housing issues a number of times and we have asked for quite some time now for a report, a review of the transfer, change of program from Housing to ECE. I wondered if the Minister could tell me when that report might be bringing forward.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Lafferty.

Mr. Chairman, that’s one of the areas that we will be coming forward. I do believe it consists of two departments, our department and Housing Corporation. It is under review right now. We did make a commitment to go before the standing committee on what’s been done and what we’re working on.

I guess I’m having a hard time understanding that it’s still coming. I believe the report was promised probably about a year ago. I’m

just wondering why the Minister has not been able to get it done since then.

Certainly we do have that information and we can certainly provide that information. I do have it here. But that information that we talked about earlier is the review of our programming, the rental subsidy area, along with the LHO Housing Corporation. But certainly the rental subsidy review, we did our own review as well. So we can certainly provide that information.

Okay. That’s good. I thank the Minister for that and look forward to seeing the document.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t see in the list of the benefit programs and so on under income security, I don’t see a Ready for Work Program or a get back to work program. I know we’re all aware that many of our public housing tenants are able to work, but they’re not employed. There are many costs to operating a housing program. I see that as a good overlap. There’s a resource there of people who are probably, certainly many, willing and able to work or certainly able. And there’s a real increase in cost as our revenue goes down over time here for housing and a real need to start becoming more efficient. I think by getting these people to work we’re going to be increasing their skills and increasing their well-being and so on. So my question to the Minister, and I’ve raised this before and I know lots of others have repeatedly, questions of liability come up, and, of course, I think that’s crazy. The HAP house program, of course, must have had to deal with the liability issue. There have to be ways. How are we going to get these people to work?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. I did talk about the Ready to Work Program. That’s one of the areas that we are tackling. Not only that, but just providing the basic essential skills development, I guess you can call it. Individuals that are willing to enter the workforce, we are willing to assist as well. That is part of our income support area. We provide that type of assistance for individuals who are willing and able to work. We’ll do what we can to assist them and they need to do their part as well. We’re there to guide them along the way to provide them training as much as possible for them to enter the workforce and also at the same time provide basic subsidy for them to get by, because we know that minimum

wage does not cover everything in the Northwest Territories due to the high cost of living.

I guess I’m looking for more than that. I appreciate what the Minister has mentioned and the programs he’s mentioned. I wonder if there’s a way that we can require work. We have to maintain these houses and heat them and so on. We’ve got lots of renovations that we’re going to be doing as we bump these houses up to EnerGuide for Houses 80 and maybe district heating, using wood and wood gasification for heating homes and so on. We’re going to need a lot of firewood collected and so on. These tenants that are paying $32 per month but are able people, is there thinking along those lines to start putting these people to work in ways that certainly will benefit the program, but also benefit the people and contribute to their skill development and so on?

Certainly that is one of the productive choices that we have to have in place. We are working on that. In the small communities there are certain areas we can certainly tackle, whether it be getting wood for the elders or just basic chores that they can certainly do in the community. That’s the area that we talked about. I think we need to think innovative and creative within our programming, because there are a lot of able people who can work and can be out in the workforce that shouldn’t be on income security. They pay $32 a month, so they take full advantage of the Income Assistance Program. Our goal is, of course, to get them off income security and enter them into the workforce. So, yes, we will continue to strive for that and push it further within our own department, working with the communities in that fashion.

Thank you for those comments from the Minister. I appreciate that interest and willingness and commitment. I think he would find, if he could bring something forward, that committee would be very willing to put some energies into working with him on this. The earlier the better. I think we know we’re going to be facing some dollar crunches here this year. The sooner we can get this, the sooner we can reduce our costs in the long run. Just a comment.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. No question. I’ll go to the next person on my list. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to follow up on Mr. Bromley’s comments. Something that we discussed in committee relative to income security and people going from unemployment to employment. We tried to encourage the Minister to look at a transition period. When people have been unemployed, they get a job, in terms of housing and income security

they are automatically pretty much put into a very high bracket in terms of rent as soon as they become employed. It doesn’t give them any chance to transition from being an unemployed to an employed person. I wonder if the Minister could say whether or not the department is considering a transition period in terms of analyzing income when people go from unemployed to employed.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. Certainly we do provide that kind of incentive for individuals who are willing to enter the workforce. We’ll continue to, of course, improve in that area as well. But we do provide that service to those individuals.