I stand corrected. It is true; there is something out there for seniors living in their own home. I agree. All of those policies and all of those programs available to seniors living in their own housing are all means tested. Some of them like the Repair Program that the Minister referred to, you can get up to a certain amount of money. If you want to access that, you have to allow the NWT Housing Corporation to become a joint homeowner with you. They need to register a caveat on your title in order to do that. The reason they do that is because they are worried. If you get $20,000 to fix up your house and then, in five years, you decide to sell your house, or in three years, that you might be receiving a benefit. So it is hard to rationalize that, then, with the fact that the other policy has absolutely no means test as do all the ones that he is referring to that seniors in their own homes have. They are all means tested and the NWT Housing Corporation wants to co-own your home with you in case you receive a benefit. How does he rationalize that? Thank you.

The Member is correct; there is a forgivable mortgage that assigns liens and security to our new programs. We do not provide free rent to the seniors. The Housing Corporation charges full rent. ECE offsets the rent by paying it 100 percent.

Mr. Speaker, it is an area that needs attention. It was put in place during the days, in the era of one that there were not a lot of high income pensioners in our smaller communities. It was only targeted towards the smaller communities. Now the program has been opened up to the larger regional centres and it is cause for concern. We have a lot of what could be interpreted as windfall situations, so it needs to be looked at and a program has to be incorporated. That is our intention, is to look at it and see what we can do there. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Might I suggest that the policy that allows seniors to live in NWT Housing Corporation’s social housing unit for no rent assessed to them is not a policy of ECE? It is a policy of the Housing Corporation. So I am very glad to hear that although ECE may pay that subsidy out of their budget, it is in fact a policy of the Housing Corporation that says to the Department of ECE, do not charge those seniors

anything for rent and utilities regardless of their income. I want to put that on the record, because that is the case.

Mr. Speaker, when the Housing Corporation and ECE do take a look at this policy, would they commit to including the NWT seniors in the consultation about improving this policy? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, first of all I should say that the government policy that requires us to provide free rent to housing is one that is fully subsidized by ECE. They could decide to change that subsidy level with some discussion with Cabinet, I guess. We would, once we have decided how we are going to move forward or how the next steps are going to take place, we do have a lengthy list of to do’s. We have a lengthy list of issues that have been raised by Members of this House during this session and the last couple to address...We need to involve as many people that are affected, of course, as possible. That will include the seniors and we will ensure that happens. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of ECE and it gets back to my Member’s statement talking about the transfer of public housing rental subsidy from the Housing Corporation over to ECE a number of years ago. During the debates that we had in the 15th Legislative Assembly, the Minister of ECE at

the time told us that the transfer was a critical part of the income security redesign. If it was such a critical component, I am just wondering where this income security redesign sits with this government and this Minister. Where exactly is this income security redesign? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Certainly when the transfer took effect, there was an income security reform established at that time. Part of that is to deal with the subsidies at hand. There is a plan in place since 2005. We are continuing to work with the plan and also expanding if we need to in certain areas, also improving certain areas. It does reflect on the public housing rental subsidy. It also has guiding principles that we follow within our reform. Mahsi.

I would like to thank the Minister for that. I guess it is nice to hear they have a plan. It was the last government’s plan. When has this income security redesign in the plan that the Minister talks about been before the standing committee and this House? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, any new initiative that comes before this House is presented to the standing committee. Previous governments had their own government at that time. Today, the 16th Assembly, we follow the

principle that is before us. I can certainly easily share that with the standing committee because we are transparent. We can certainly share that information.

I think it is important to highlight that we are working with what has been developed in 2005. We continue to make progress. As the Minister of the Housing Corporation has indicated, we can certainly look at some changes so we need to make some changes for the betterment of the program we deliver into the communities. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, on something as large as income security redesign, this is a new government. The decision was made by the last government and the direction that was taken by the last government, I think we have had numerous discussions in here about decisions that were made by the last government. The current government seems to want to go forward with others. They don’t. I don’t understand why the Minister and the government wouldn’t come forward with what exactly their plan is. There are a number of new Members here. I am not a member of the Social Programs committee, Mr. Speaker, but the Minister should get this plan in front of the standing committee and tell us exactly what is going to happen. When will that happen? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, certainly that is one of the areas that we are looking at, myself and the Minister of the Housing Corporation. We will be before the standing committee to highlight what we have done to date. The plan initiated in 2005 in April until today where we are, where we need to improve, and now what kind of progress have we made since then and where we are going with it. Certainly, Mr. Speaker, I will commit in the House that we will be presenting to the standing committee on a going-forward basis what we have done to date. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is a plan that I believe all Members are going to have to

buy into and I know just today this was the first I heard of an independent review. I believe it was the Minister of Housing that spoke of an independent review taking place. There was a review that was promised to committee back last February, I believe. This issue came up right after the election in 2007. I believe the Minister made some commitments to get us a review on the transfer that was supposed to be here in February of last year. Here we are a year later. Now they are talking about an independent review, Mr. Speaker. Exactly where is the departmental review on the transfer? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, within our department there are different types of reviews that are undertaken. Since the transfer of the program in 2005 until today, we have conducted several reviews to see what is working and what is not working.

We continue, as I stated earlier, Mr. Speaker, and I will continue to do so. We are making improvements into our program. Again, I stated that, with the Minister of Housing Corporation, we are going forward with a review of our program today. We will continue to share that with the standing committee. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. I would like to remind Members of your rules governing question period. We have used up 38 minutes and only five Members have gotten to ask questions yet. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.

Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Michael McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am not sure what the Member means by fair share of administration to do the renovations. Mr. Speaker, as I indicated in Committee of the Whole, this year our budget for housing capital is at $27 million. We expect the federal government will come forward, once the federal budget is approved, for another $25 million. That is $52 million this year.

Our intention is to have a plan that we would present to standing committee along with our many issues or many areas that have been brought forward in the last while and what we intend to do with it. We would like to have that brought forward in front of the standing committee and try to tackle these issues on a going-forward basis with all Members involved so everybody is aware of how we are proceeding.

As the Minister of ECE and I have said already, we are looking at doing a number of evaluations. Some of it is being brought forward as intentions right now and a lot had the opportunity to go in front of committee, but we would like to do that and present the framework.

Having said that, our intention is to work with the LHOs to provide more and additional tools or resources to the communities so they can tackle some of the areas that have been challenging, especially the Nunakput area with the public housing units and the private home units. We would be glad to share that information with the Member once it is all packaged up and ready for discussion with standing committee. I can assure that the information will be there. Thank you.

Will this government review the current contributions to the communities regarding staff salaries so the communities can realistically recruit and retain staff that we desperately need? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This is an area that was flagged as a concern with the Auditor General, I believe, and it’s an area that we’ve really been working hard to improve so that we are in tune with what the LHOs are facing. We are able to work with them to try to deal with the challenges. The short answer to the Member’s question is, yes, we’ll do whatever we can to work with the LHOs.

We have to realize, though, all LHOs are expected to operate on the dollars that we can provide. The onus is on LHOs to collect some of the rent that they also use for operations. There are some areas that we can outright look at and provide wherever we can support, but there are other areas where the onus is on the LHO to enhance. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, will the government commit to implementing more centralized policies so that the regional centres have clear guidelines when developing future plans? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The answer is yes. Of course we need to ensure everybody’s on the same page. It’s the same instructions that we provided to our regional staff and to the LHOs, that communications are a

priority for us. We want to change our attitude towards providing -- maybe attitude isn’t the word but -- change our approach so that communication, information is at the forefront so people are well aware of our programs, including our own staff. Thank you.