Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I stated before, this was one-time funding but we have not closed the door on this. This is money of which there’s been an uptake of right now. We’re more than willing in the future if the program continues to be a success and we find that we do need more funding, then we’ll come back to this forum to request the funding.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Is that it? Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Committee, page 5-50, information item, finance and infrastructure services, grants and contributions. Questions?

Page 5-53, information item, debt repayment, operations expenditure summary. Questions?

Page 5-55, information item, programs and district operations, operations expenditure summary. Questions?

Page 5-56, information item, programs and district operations, grants and contributions. Questions?

Page 5-59, information item, local housing organizations, operations expenditure summary. Questions?

Page 5-60, information item, local housing organizations, grants and contributions. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask a question here. A while ago we were given some information with regard to, well, actually it’s a tabled document; Public Housing Vacancy Status. I noted in Yellowknife we have a wait list of, actually, this is February 15, 2009, there are 141 people or families waiting for a unit within a total complement of 293 public housing units. That’s 150 percent units are required or 50 percent of the possible units are on a wait list. I just wondered from a corporation perspective what they can do to assist the Yellowknife Housing Authority to try and accommodate some of these people who are on this huge wait list.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The waiting list now, I think the Member quoted 149, it’s down to 109 currently. It’s down to 109. So some people have been accommodated. We do have a lot of lease commitments in the city. The public housing units, this is basically what we have now. Other than putting new houses on the ground or finding some new lease commitments this is going to be an issue. There’s a waiting list for pretty well all of the communities. This is one that we need to address and if it means... I think the city has new public housing units coming this year, so there will be some new public housing units being put on stream this year.

Thanks for the updated number, but that’s still one-third more units required than what we have space for. I’m sure that’s not what we’re building. I appreciate that things can’t be done totally, but from a corporation perspective is there any reason why we have so many people on the waiting list? Is it just that, do all of these people qualify? I presume they do. Do we have that many people requiring housing in Yellowknife? Even out of the total units in the Territory, it’s like some 2,300 units and 110 of them or so are here in Yellowknife. That’s still a pretty huge number. Is there any hope that the corporation can do something to try and reduce this waiting list further?

Thanks to the Minister. The document that I’m looking at showed only 300 vacancies in the Territory. So if it’s gone up to 500 across the Territory, that’s not good. Yellowknife has gone a bit, but the whole Territory has gone up a lot. So that’s not progress, in my mind.

I had one other question. The corporation was working with local housing organizations to provide them with some training and to provide them with some assistance in terms of operating more

efficiently and collecting more of their arrears and they’re working on rent collections and so on and I just wondered, you know, as to that program of sort of advancing the local housing organizations to reach a higher level of skills and quality of service and so on. How has that been going? Do you feel that there has been some success and that the organizations are progressing? Thank you.

There’s always been within the LHOs a high degree of skills. The LHO managers are very well qualified. We have tenant relations officers that have been with the LHO for years and so the capacity at the local level, which has always been very good, continues to get better. We continue to work with the LHOs to provide training for them and just assisting them in any way possible so that they’re able to do their job much better, but the LHOs are usually a long serving group and they’re usually within the organization for years. So they have good understanding of how the system works and they’re progressing quite well, and as we get into more arrears collections and rent collections and new technology, then they’re constantly being updated. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Committee, once again, we’re on page 5-60, information item. Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Chair, I seek unanimous consent to go back to 5-55.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Member for Sahtu requests committee to go back to page 5-55.

---Unanimous consent granted.

Go ahead, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, colleagues. Mr. Chair, I have a motion, a committee motion here.

Very good, Mr. Yakeleya. Go ahead.