Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am not against this motion. I understand full well about the frustration that has been created by this process and this shift. Mr. Speaker, I am just not for the shift back. I think that I feel strongly that the service model was the approach that needs to be considered. In a time of efficiency when we are trying to organize and strategize how we can do business better, this seemed to be the right direction to go.

Mr. Speaker, what you are hearing today is frustration about, in my view, what is a good model but with pathetic implementation. Mr. Speaker, why do you send people to two offices in order to be able to have housing? To me, that’s just foolishness. That signal should have been raised loud and clear over three years ago. Mr. Speaker, someone should have been able to put the connect between the frustration of trying to get your paperwork processed and filled out and then get that money and then the transfer over to that office by carrying down the cheque or the money order to make sure that they don’t raise your actual subsidized rent to market rent. Mr. Speaker, it’s very clear here where the problem is. You know, there was a time when I agreed that switching it back was the only solution and I’ll make note of that. I supported those last two motions, Mr. Speaker, but I think after examining the complexity of this problem, it’s the fact that it’s a good model, just horrible implementation.

Mr. Speaker, there is no reason why people need to go to two offices in order to process this work. I think very well it also explains why we have 14 extra employees on this file. That’s because the people from the Housing didn’t want to migrate over to the ECE income support side. So the system facilitated the need for two sets of employees that at one time, only one set was required to process the paperwork.

Mr. Speaker, in a perfect world, you know, nobody would need subsidies and everybody would be able to work all the time and take care of their families but, unfortunately, there are struggles. I think the government has misunderstood they’ve complicated this process by trying to fix it and I think what they’ve done is they’ve missed the obvious, which is to bring them together.

Mr. Speaker, I know some people believe that if you get income support, you are on welfare and if you

go get a housing subsidy, you’re not. Mr. Speaker, I think those types of terminologies need to end. People are looking for help and that’s what it really is, it’s a helping hand.

I would hope that we see beyond those types of terminologies. Mr. Speaker, it’s about helping people. I think in the long run, the model that needs to be considered is the one that is being looked at and it’s about efficiency and process. If they would just sit down…Sorry, if ECE would just sit down and work it out with Housing, they could quit and easily come up with a model by bringing over those extra employees, migrating them over to the income support side and you could go in there and fill out your paperwork from start to finish and your subsidy would be processed at that moment. All the information you need to do in order to qualify for the housing, you can process all in the same shop.

Mr. Speaker, at one time I understood it was if you were getting a housing subsidy support through the housing program and you go down there and file your paperwork, they didn’t necessarily quite know what you were doing over at income support. So there was a disconnect between the two offices. So someone could go down and get some support and then go down to another office and come under another type of position and say I need some support too and the two offices were duplicating a process, which this service model was aimed to correct.

The long and the short of it is, Mr. Speaker, as I have said twice, it’s a good model, just poorly implemented and the one-window approach is the way to go. I respect my colleagues. They are right in the sense that there has to be a better way to fix it. I can fully understand their call to return it because it makes sense that if it’s not working, let’s go back to how it was working. My issue really is it should be working and they forgot to do the other part of the job.

Mr. Speaker, with regret, I won’t be supporting the motion, but I do fully subscribe to the passion brought forward by my colleagues here. I recognize that, because it is an important issue. All that’s being created out of this -- let’s fix it -- has created frustration. Mr. Speaker, I once again say to the Minister of Education and the Minister of Housing, go for a coffee, realize that you have to get together and you guys can sit down and sort this out over a small conversation. You can have a Cabinet directive and we could sort this out within a couple of days. That’s all it would take, Mr. Speaker, is some vision, some energy and some wherewithal to say we are going to do something today and, darn it, we are going to do it right. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I, for one, was on the other side of the table when this decision was made some four years ago. The intention was to take the $30 million from the Housing Corporation, give it to ECE and transfer the money back to the housing authorities, so they could continue to pay for the operation and maintenance of their public housing units; some 2400 units. But the thing is, is through that transfer arrangement, there has been a lot of chaos in that process.

Mr. Speaker, the whole intent of social housing in the North -- at one time they used to call it Aboriginal Rural Housing in Northern Canada -- was to provide housing and subsidize it through the CMHC process. CMHC is the one that basically covers the costs for social housing all across Canada.

Yet, Mr. Speaker, what we are seeing now is because of the cost going up with regard to operating and maintaining housing in the Northwest Territories, there is not enough money to really operate and maintain the number of units that we have. Again, for the amount of money we are spending out of the $30 million for extra administration costs, the cost of people flying in and out of communities, the scenario that Mr. Hawkins mentioned is a good scenario if you are in a community such as Yellowknife. But when you go to a community and you don’t have income support workers and you don’t have a housing authority manager, you have to wait for someone to come into the community, sit down, do your paperwork and, hopefully, get the subsidy. If you don’t get the subsidy because you happen to miss a pay stub, you are going to get charged at the economic rate. That was not the way the system worked with the housing authorities before this transfer took place.

Mr. Speaker, what we are seeing is a system of dependence and also a system where basically people in communities are refusing to work on the basis that they’re penalized as soon as they get a job with a local contractor or get a job through a local agent by way of short-term work and they are being charged the economic rate because they went to income support. Sorry, can I see your pay stub? The guy doesn’t have his pay stub, so he goes back to Housing and says I don’t have my pay stub. Sorry, you are going to pay the economic rate. Then once you do that, you’re stuck in a situation where you’re in arrears. Because you are in arrears and you are no longer working, the cycle goes where the person was able to go to work, find a job, improve the quality of life for his family and he is not penalized because we have a system that is really

there to control a person’s lifestyle of I have a job, I am going to work, I am going to earn some money.

Before when the housing authority had it, there was a transition period. If you were laid off for some period of time, you were an income support client or paying the $32 a month, they will allow you a three or four-month transitional period to get back into the workforce. In the system we have now, that system is no longer there.

When I was up in Aklavik this last weekend I met with a business gentleman there who is trying to find people to work in the local cafe that he just opened up. He’s having problems and he knows good people that he wants to work, but they refuse to work because they know that as soon as they go to work their rent is going to go through the roof because they’re going to start paying economic rent. Because of that, people that work for the businesspeople in our communities won’t work for them anymore because they’ve been penalized to a point where it doesn’t make sense to work in our communities because the system we have does not allow that to happen. I think it’s at a point where it’s affecting not only the social well-being of the community but the economic viability of our communities because of the way the system is now in place.

The way it was before, you were able to sit down with Housing and say, look, I just got a job, I’m going to probably work for three or four months, and you were able to sit down with them and say, okay, this is how much I think I’m going to make in the next three or four months. I’ll agree to pay you this much, and then do another assessment on me in three months and we’ll see exactly how much I made and I’ll bring my pay stub in then. For me, that was the biggest downfall of this program. It has totally disrupted the communities’ resources by way of our people.

The dependency on income support is now at a point where they control every aspect of your life by way of education grants, housing grants, and also even seniors’ fuel subsidies. Seniors are refusing to go to income support because they’re going to basically say, well, who’s living with you. Can you give me a statement to see how many people are in your household? These seniors in their 80s are saying, well, forget it. I’ll pay for my own fuel. I’ll take care of my own bills. I’ve been doing it all my life. I don’t need you. Yet these are people who are living in their own homes because income support in our communities, the way they’re doing their assessment is not working. The way the Housing used to do the assessment, it was working.

For me, that is the biggest problem that I see with this system, is that it has totally lost the intention that was supposed to be there. It was supposed to

consolidate $100 million of programs and the government that operates by way of social support programs, and have a system that you can go in, you get your education grant, you can get your seniors’ fuel subsidy, you can get your housing subsidy, you can get, you know, check out your allowances that you get for child support. We’ve got a system that’s in one place. But the system that we have now is that we’ve got people flying from Inuvik to Tulita, or flying into Sachs or going into Tsiigehtchic so that basically they’ll come and if you don’t happen to be in town at the moment, you missed your assessment. Sorry, go to Housing. Well, we’re going to have to charge you economic rent because you didn’t make your meeting.

For me, the system is totally broken and we have to basically go back to where we started from and make sure that it works. It worked before and the system that we have now is broken. For me, being on that side of the House when we made this decision, housing authority, all they were thinking about, the Housing Corporation, was holy smokes, social housing is getting cut, maybe let’s give that problem to ECE and let them go get the extra money for housing. Then we’ll basically realize in 25 years it’s going to be zero, but that’s their problem. We’ll just charge them rent. Well, excuse me. That problem is still there. Thirty million dollars is still in somebody else’s hand, but we’re spending more money on administration and operational costs with that money, which is getting smaller and basically we have no idea how to replace it.

Mr. Speaker, I will be supporting the motion and I think it’s time that we gave the money back to Housing and run it the way it was.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. To the motion. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

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.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. To the motion. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also rise in support of the motion requesting that full responsibility for the Public Rental Subsidy Program be returned to the local housing organizations.

My list will be familiar now to many. Some of the problems, not surprisingly: communication between the new agencies is proving to be difficult and problematic. As well as communications within the system, we’ve got a third-party situation for our tenants now. Rather than dealing with one office, the original intent, they’re, of course, dealing with a couple and this is leading to a lot of confusion, frustration and failures. The income reporting requirements, again, is pretty onerous on people. Monthly requirements -- my colleague Mr. Krutko has highlighted that situation. There are lots of other issues on the assessments and the basis of gross income rather than net and so on that are actually related to this and the lack of understanding that can accrue with true one-stop shopping for housing services.

Of course, the client service officers, they also have other commitments, as we’ve heard, and they’re not able to focus on housing as officers used to be within the LHOs. Simply keeping those positions, client services officers positions filled in communities is a challenge because, of course, they do have these other roles to play. They are sensitive roles in small communities associated with income support and because it’s hard on people, of course, there is a lot of turnover in those positions and thus it makes it even more

challenging for the housing aspects that they are also meant to fulfill.

Having two locations, as I mentioned, not all public housing tenants are on income support and so it’s not as straightforward as it was apparently initially conceived, leading to confusion and unnecessary work.

Mr. Speaker, today’s shell game of responsibilities that I experienced during question period is probably a good example of what my housing tenant constituents actually experience on a regular basis and I thought was a good sort of reflection of the issue that we’re trying to address here.

The Member for Yellowknife Centre highlighted implementation as the problem. That Member seems to have infinite patience for resolving this. We’ve been four years at this and, my gosh, Mr. Speaker, how long do we need to wait? I think it’s clear now that we can’t wait any longer. We must act now to get things back to a model we know will actually work. He also mentioned that the new model was more efficient and so on. How can that be so when we’ve created the 13 or 14 new positions, $1.3 million and, of course, shifted costs to the tenants now who bear costs such as the monthly administration work that they have to do trying to get proof of employment from employers who are probably slow to report that, et cetera, et cetera, and running back and forth between different offices?

Mr. Speaker, I’ll just leave it at that. Many of these issues have already been highlighted. But I do say let’s return the Public Housing Subsidy Program to the Housing Corporation specialists that are actually efficient at delivering that program. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. To the motion. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, will be supporting the motion. Mr. Speaker, again, I’ve indicated, I think, in terms of the way things are going it has to somewhat reflect back to the federal government’s Social Housing Agreement. In my documents, in terms of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and the Social Housing Agreement, the government announced in 1996 it would offer provinces and territories opportunities to manage the existing off-reserve federal social housing. This initiative streamlined administrative arrangements in social housing, provides for one-stop shopping for clients and encourages the best possible use of public funds. The provinces and territories who signed the Social Housing Agreements are subject to national principles and accountable framework that ensure the federal subsidies continue to flow to low-income residents.

Mr. Speaker, in theory, when this initiative was brought up it sounded like a very good theory. However, four years later, still what we’re hearing from last year, two years, the practicalities it’s not working in our communities. Even as of this morning when I called into the Sahtu they’re having difficulties with this one-stop concept in my community. The people who I talked to said that some of the assessments are finally getting caught up, are being done today, that are two or three months behind. It’s caused a lot of problems, a lot of frustration; a lot of frustration in my community in terms of how this is supposed to work out. I understand the implementation. There are growing pains. I certainly agree with what Mr. Miltenberger said in 2006 in terms of implementation, in terms of the Hansard, in terms of the implementation and give it time to see where changes could take place and where changes could happen. However, it’s been four years, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the people today that I spoke to haven’t seen much of a change in my community in terms of the one office, Education, Culture and Employment and Housing sitting over here. I thought the one-stop shop concept was going to actually physically put the two organizations into one building. But what we see is people being shuffled around. It’s causing a lot of frustration. People in my community are totally frustrated. People in the region are frustrated with how this process is being rolled out. I would dare to say, Mr. Speaker, that if things were changing for the good, I would say that we wouldn’t be coming forward with this motion here.

Mr. Speaker, this motion here also speaks to the decline of the federal...The federal government will be declining this type of funding in 2038. They are getting out of the social housing initiatives. They said it loud and clear. They’re downloading these programs to the Northwest Territories. In 1996-97 I think they started to reduce the federal expenditures and that’s when, at the same time, they implemented the increase in the rental scale. That was discussed with us in 2005, the increase in the rental scale, from 25 percent to the maximum to 30 percent. At the same time, we had this program being introduced to us.

Mr. Speaker, in my communities they talk about the social income programs with the housing programs. Now they talk about people who have been in the social assistance category as welfare recipients. They talk about people who have never been in arrears who are actually going into arrears. Sometimes that’s very difficult for people who move out of our community to move to another community who want to apply for housing; however, because it’s tagged as there are arrears on their application, they are rejected. People are getting rejected in terms of finding places in other

communities because the arrears are following them. I think there should be a limitation on the arrears in terms of people who have run into this problem here.

Mr. Speaker, this issue here is being questioned by my people in the region. The Housing Association has been doing a good job. They had some people there that were doing a fine job of having them done, prior to the new move to the Education, Culture and Employment taking over the program. So they’re saying, why are we changing right now. That doesn’t make sense. People are saying that no one really came into their communities and talked to the people, similar to what we had, the discussion with the board reform. People are saying that this big shift here in terms of administrating the housing with Education, Culture and Employment, it came down from the departments. People who have worked for the departments will not speak against the government. They fear that they are going to lose their job. It’s a fear in the region that if people say that Housing or Education, that they’re going to say something, they’re not going to say something that’s going to jeopardize their work, their income. So they’re going along with what the department is saying. The people in the region are saying that Housing, Education, this government should have come in to the smaller communities and really had a good discussion and talked to the people about how this program is going to be implemented in the communities and what issues it should look for. But it came down and said this is what we’re going to do. No one talked to the people. That’s my understanding today and that’s why people are frustrated with this process.

In theory, Mr. Speaker, it sounded good. We read it and it sounded good, but in practicality, you’re seeing issues like this come up. I bring it to the same type of scenario with the board reform. This has to be stopped and looked at seriously by this government. If something needed to be fixed, you should have talked to the people in the communities to say, how can we fix this. But it hasn’t been done. This is what the people are telling us.

I talked to a few of the students who are going to school at Aurora College. I asked them about the housing and how it is working out with the programs and that. Two of them responded by two letters, Mr. Speaker. Because I can’t find them, I won’t be able to table them. It is not in accordance with the rules of tabling documents. So I am going to read them, Mr. Speaker.

“I’m a student at the adult upgrading program in Tulita. I can tell you about the difficulties in living in a small, social housing in a small community because it applies to my situation.”

The rules of the House do not permit for reading extensively from a document. That is not done before the House. Mr. Yakeleya.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. To the motion. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I do appreciate all the Members’ comments on this particular item. It has been a true discussion that we have been having here. The transfer of the program itself since 2005, it has been four years now. We are, as I stated earlier, making progress. We have compiled information on what we have done to date. The Minister of the Housing Corporation and I will certainly meet with the standing committee to show them this is where we are at and this is where we want to go.

I just want to reflect on some of the comments that were made here today. We were told that this whole thing is broke today. I think I don’t see anything broken today. We continue to deliver the service that we have been providing for the last four

years, even before then. But since the transfer, I think we have made great strides on delivering an effective program into the communities. Sure, there are gaps here and there, but we are improving those areas, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, there were talks about the positions, that it is costing us additional to deliver a program. That is not going to change even though it is transferred back to the Housing Corporation. It will still continue to cost us to deliver a program, because we need to reach out to communities. That is what we are doing today. We train our own client services officers. We train community members, LHOs and board members. We are doing what we can as a department to give them more detailed information on what is available, what is working and what is not working. How can we fix it? Let’s find a solution. We continue to strive, Mr. Speaker. Maybe that is part of the reason why it is costing us money. If we don’t do that, we get criticized for making decisions at a headquarter level. I am a firm believer in going to the communities and reaching out. The 33 communities that we service, we will continue to do so, Mr. Speaker. Yes, there has been some improvement in assessment and also income security reform that the Members have alluded to. That will be before the committee. We did make a commitment today.

Arrears have been brought up. Arrears were there before the transfer happened. Even up to 1996 I remember there were arrears, people being evicted. That is nothing new. We took it on and we are making efforts to change that. We are making progress. As the Minister of the Housing Corporation has alluded to already, we have made great strides; 70 or 80 percent on average on rent collections since we took over the program. That is a huge progress to date that we have made. It wasn’t there before. Members need to be aware of that also.

Mr. Speaker, the ECE, when we took over the program back in 2005, we have not made any policy changes. We still continue to deliver the program under the regime of the Housing Corporation guidelines at that time. But, then again, we have improved in some areas. We do continue to make changes as well.

Just talking about transferring back to the Housing Corporation, some are saying that it should be done right away, like today. It would not be an easy transition. When it was transferred to us, we had to learn the last four years. Transferring back will certainly cost. We don’t know how much it is going to cost us. Time will tell. Those positions did not transfer to us, so we created our own positions dealing with all the subsidies that we currently deliver. The last four years the positions were there and are there now. I don’t think they are, because

they are probably spread out to other areas so that means transferring back over there, hiring more people. Try to keep those in mind. There are additional costs of transferring back, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to highlight some of the areas that we talked about, how our staff, the committees, the regions happen through the system. I would just like to say, I guess, I give some kudos to my departmental staff that has worked tremendously hard to make this a true success. I think we are achieving the goal, Mr. Speaker. It is not an easy ride. At the same time, we are doing what we can to deliver the most effective program in the communities, the regions and the Northwest Territories, and most especially those client service officers in the regions and in the communities.

Mr. Speaker, as you know, this is not an easy position to be in. This is a real stressful job that these client services officers are undertaking. They don’t get any credit whatsoever. It is always a negative aspect. They need a pat on the back every now and then. The last four years has been a tremendous struggle to make this a perfect program that we can deliver. At the same time, Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of pressure and stress pertaining to these roles that individuals are undertaking in the communities.

On behalf of the government, I am not going to speak for long, Mr. Speaker, because we are going to be presenting to the standing committee. They are either watching or listening today. I would just like to say thank you for your hard work and patience. I would just like to say to them, keep up the good work. We deserve every effort that you put into the system. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. To the motion. The honourable Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation, Mr. Michael McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will say up front that I am not going to spend too much time on this issue. We have had some good discussion today. I certainly appreciate the comments the Members have made. There are a lot of issues in the area of housing needs in the Northwest Territories and many of them are raised today. I can’t say all of them can be blamed or should be attributed to the transfer of the housing or the dollars to Education, Culture and Employment. My intention was to have an assessment. We had some discussions with the ECE. We recognize there is a need. It is timely that we do an assessment, we do a review. We wanted to be able to frame that out and bring it to committee. This motion came rather unexpectedly to us.

Mr. Speaker, we have to recognize that. There are other issues we need to deal with. As I mentioned

earlier, I had indicated that there are a number of things we need to talk about, how we are going to address and just some of them I would like to highlight today is the issue of seniors’ rents. That has come up. We need to address that. There is the issue of an evaluation for our Housing Choices Program. The review needs to be done. It has been a couple of years in the making now. We need to see how they are working. We have to do this public housing rental subsidy and get an independent audit to look at that.

Mr. Speaker, it was my intention to do this. I am not sure if this motion is going to allow us to do the due diligence that needs to be done. One hundred eighty days to respond is fairly short.

---Interjection

One hundred twenty is even shorter, Mr. Speaker. We need to do an evaluation on the affordable housing units. We need to do something to look at the income threshold. We have already started that. We need to do the 2009 community survey, the core needs assessment. We have to incorporate a new fuel system. We have to deal with the issue of housing for staff. We have to improve our communications. All these things were raised with us. We also have to deal with the energy issues and look at long-term strategies.

Mr. Speaker, there are issues that will come up as a result of our review. There are probably recommendations that we could work with. There was a good comment made today that, where is the proof that it is working? Well, we need to look at the proof that it is working or not working. There are benefits that we can point to. We know that the collection is back to where it was historically. We know that our LHOs that are in arrears, there are less of them in arrears now than there was at the time prior to dividing the responsibilities. We have done satisfaction reviews. They point up to 76 percent satisfaction of the process. We know that it is 10 percent of the population today that are not paying their rent for one reason or another. We don’t know if it is because there is a new system, because 10 percent was the number that we had historically. Maybe that is the number we are always going to be dealing with. For some reason or other, people are refusing to pay. There are a lot of things. There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed.

I certainly appreciate the concern being brought forward from the MLAs. I am still very much in favour of allowing us to do a formal review. I’m not sure if the motion can be amended to allow for that. We certainly will look at information that comes forward, if we are allowed to get all of this compiled

in a timely manner, to make a decision that makes sense based on true fact.

We heard today that some people were concerned that there wasn’t enough input. There wasn’t enough analysis done when this decision was made to separate the responsibilities. Well, I am concerned that there may be some impact that we haven’t fully analyzed yet, if we reverse this decision or parts of it or do nothing. So it is really difficult to respond ad hoc. We need to formalize it. I am asking, I guess, for consideration that we amend the motion to look at giving us some time to do a true analysis. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There have been many comments made today in regard to the motion; many examples of concerns about housing across the Northwest Territories. In fact, there are a number of Members here who have been around for quite some time and have heard, whenever we’ve gone to communities, probably the two most commonly raised issues when we go to communities is housing and health care and then probably followed by education. Those are commonly raised and have been since I was first elected in 1995, and continue to be even on some of our more recent trips. The fact, I think if we look back at Hansard of previous Assemblies we would see much discussion about housing, about arrears, about programs, the level of service provided in communities. There has been quite some time spent on that. In fact, I think we can go back to the Hansard and see when there were calls for past audits by the Office of the Auditor General on the Housing Corporation proper and how it delivered the programs that it was in charge of.

There has been much talk about this change that has been four years in the making. The first year was purely a financial change between the Housing Corporation and Education, Culture and Employment. The second year is when they started actually transferring program operation between the two departments. Yes, Members have highlighted that the implementation of that definitely raised many concerns in our communities, and how that flowed and continued to a certain degree in today’s environment. That’s why both Ministers have highlighted that they are going to work together to come up with a report and work with Members and, if allowed, would be looking at what options would be available. If in fact the options come back clearly that this is not going to work in this environment, then we would have to look at reverting back to a different process or original process.

Before we make the decision on that let’s recall past work done in the area of the Housing

Corporation. In fact, the Office of the Auditor General just filed a report on the NWT Housing Corporation public housing and homeownership problems in February 2008. It was based on a motion of the Legislative Assembly of the day of March 2nd , 2006, that referred to the Housing

Corporation and its operations. A response in that report, in a response to the motion made March 2nd ,

2006, the Auditor General reported the corporation needs to improve its monitoring of the LHOs’ financial reporting against plans and assist those LHOs that have accumulated deficits. Further in there it also stated that action is needed by the corporation to improve the collection of rents by the LHOs. So it shows that there are ongoing problems in the whole area of housing, rents, how the programs are operated, the monitoring that happened. In fact, I think if we again look at Hansard, there was much agitation of the Members of the previous Assembly. In fact, there was much frustration with the Housing Corporation and the Minister-of-the-day in looking for solutions at that time. Things turned out differently and, in fact, we’re now finding again concerns about this.

The Ministers have confirmed that we will look at this, work with Members, hopefully give us the time that we can get a good response back to Members and look at the options, even if that means reverting back to the old system. But again, as both Minister Lafferty and Minister McLeod pointed out, we need to take a good look at this process and if it means an independent look at it, then let’s do that and let’s put the energy in before we scrap the whole program, because history shows this is an issue, it continues to be an issue, and going back to the old program where the Auditor General reviewed past operations. Will that continue without change? No, we need to make some change, and that’s what we’re looking for here.

As well as convention, being that it’s a recommendation, we’ll be abstaining from the vote and looking to Members for their work with us.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. I will allow the mover of the motion to offer some final comments. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank all the Members for their comments on this very important matter and on this very important motion. Certainly with the transfer of this program from Housing to ECE there has been a lot of misunderstanding. We hear that the arrears have not changed, so that’s something I guess that could be proved by more of a review.

We do know that we are spending at least $1.5 million more to have it handled by ECE than we were paying for Housing to do the same program. We can’t really afford to be throwing dollars around

by the millions here. There are 14 positions. I suppose Members could have chosen to try to make the point by deleting some of the positions out of ECE, but we are not convinced that there is not value added in those additional functions that have been taken on by those income support workers. However, that does not mean that housing needs to be in their mandate to continue to have some of those income support workers at the local ECE and regional ECE offices at this time.

Let me say again that not every income support client lives in public housing and not every housing client is on income support. So I’m very glad to hear that transferring it back is an option. We’ve heard that from Minister McLeod, we’ve heard that from the Premier that it is an option. What we need to do is quantify the issues, validate, confirm what the issues are and then make an informed decision. Granted, a lot of what we hear as Regular Members does seem a little anecdotal. You, with the resources that you have -- or that the Members have on the other side of the House -- are probably in a better position to quantify some of the issues.

As to the comments made by Minister Lafferty about the survey, the satisfaction survey, I don’t know how scientific a survey like that is when you’re asking people that you’re giving income support and housing to, to say here, how would you like to do a survey on how we’re treating you. I mean, these are folks, I’m sorry, by the very nature of what they’re coming to see you about, who are a little vulnerable. So I’m not really sure how scientific your satisfaction survey is.

We have not criticized the income support workers today. I want to make that very clear. I did not hear one person on this side of the House stand up and criticize the income support workers. We are criticizing the government, if anything, for what we perceive is something that happened that should not have happened. They are just doing their jobs to the best of their ability in the environment that we have put them in. But let’s be very clear that nobody here is criticizing the income support workers.

Mr. Yakeleya likened this kind of rationale of this one-stop shop, let’s put everything together, kind of does give you deja vu on the whole board reform thing. Somehow we’re going to have these mega, all-encompassing, omni-offices that are going to deal with our people on all things. I think that is a wrong approach up here. As I said before, housing authorities, LHOs have a longstanding history in our communities of not only maintaining and ascribing rental units to people to meet their needs, but I think that the good work they have done over the years needs to be recognized as well.

Mr. Hawkins talked about the model is a good model, the problem is no one’s seen the model, not in its fullness of what was originally envisioned when this all started off. What we’ve seen is just a little portion of it and we’re saying the little portion we’ve seen we don’t really feel works very well.

How much would it cost? Let’s take that model a bit further and talk about that one window and co-locating. What are we going to do? Are we going to put housing over to ECE? I mean, my gosh, ECE is one of the biggest departments in our government. I think ECE has enough to do. I think ECE has enough stuff within their mandate. Housing in and of itself is a large issue. It’s a huge issue. It is at the very, very crux of the quality of life that people can possibly hope to aspire to in our communities. Having a home to go to is the very basic foundation of the quality of life for our people. Housing is a large, and I think should be, stand-alone issue. Someone said, if it ain’t broke...Or I guess the motto we want to say is let’s not break it. If it’s not broke, let’s build on what’s good.

Also, repeating Mr. Abernethy’s comments, there’s no shame in admitting that we made a mistake. I don’t know how much it would cost for things to revert back, but let’s not just take a position over there that if we say yes, you say no, we say black, you say white. Let’s get together. I don’t think this is going to be solved over a cup of coffee between Mr. Lafferty and Mr. McLeod and a quick conversation, but thank you for committing today to coming back to the Standing Committee on Social Programs. Thank you for the overtures which we’ve heard that said let’s find a solution together and let’s make sure that the people who need our support in our communities and who need housing are looked after in the best way possible.

Could I also please request a recorded vote?

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Member is requesting a recorded vote, Madam Clerk. All those in favour of the motion, please stand.

All those opposed to the motion, please stand.