Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was just going raise a question in regards to the Auditor General report which was presented February 2008. I know I raised issues in the House yesterday about the Homeownership Program. One of the recommendations in regards to the report, it says that the evaluation of Homeownership Programs is not performed on a regular basis. So I would just like to know when is the review taking place on the program and exactly what type of review are we looking at in regards to performance review, in regards to client surveys. Are we going to be looking at the whole area of accessibility and also ensuring that we do have a system?
I know we’ve raised the issue of appeals and whatnot for clients who have had issue with it. I know that the Auditor’s General report was pretty intense and basically went through quite a few things, and I know that the department has made efforts to review some of those recommendations. But I’d just like to ask exactly where is that program going.
One of the other areas that I think we’ve raised a lot of times, especially from our small communities, is log construction. It seems like this government or this department does not want to see log houses built in the communities. I think for our residents in our communities, especially the aboriginal communities, they’ve always worked with wood in
regard to log cabins, log homes that they’ve built themselves in the past, and there are still people in our communities that have log houses. But I think that we have to start using the timber resources in the Northwest Territories, especially our forestry resources, and stop importing a lot of our wood products where we can produce it in the North, especially where we have the potential of wood misers or sawmills or even looking at the areas that we have for that potential. I know that the government in the past, through previous governments, have looked at log housing initiatives. I think that, for myself, we have to not totally exclude that opportunity that’s there, especially where we do have the timber stands, we do have the resources close by our communities or around our communities and that people have had experience with building log houses in the past. Again, I think that we have to look at those types of initiatives.
The other initiative that has been very successful, especially in my riding, is the area of the Elders on the Land Program where people that basically want to live out on the land but also don’t really want to be in town, but having the ability to implement that program. I know, especially for seniors and people that we talk about improving the quality of life for people, one thing that we found in McPherson especially is the seniors that do have the elders units on the land is that they’re probably one of the healthier people in our communities, if not the healthiest. They still carry on a very traditional lifestyle. They still continue their traditional pursuits such as fishing and dealing with the caribou meat and making dried meat, dried fish, and also continue to be independent where they cut their own wood, they pack their own wood, pack their water. Yet, that traditional lifestyle is not acceptable in existing housing programs we have. I think a lot of people, I don’t know if it’s a question of allergies or whatnot or just dealing with housing construction, you hear from a few people that because these new, modern homes, they make them so energy efficient that they basically are circulating a lot of the air in the units where you don’t have that ability.
I’d like to ask the Minister if he’d seriously consider looking at those types of initiatives and, more importantly, reviewing exactly what was suggested by the Auditor General of having a regular review of the program services on a regular basis so that we can see exactly what the pros and cons of those programs are and making them better than what they already are and, if anything, improving on what we already have. Thank you.