Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m very glad to see that after almost 30 years of work there’s an agreement-in-principle for devolution of our lands, resources and royalties. The Northwest Territories has hit a huge milestone. There will be many opportunities for the people to come out of this.

We have always talked about our land and our future, but the federal government has been controlling all major developments that take place. The federal government also takes all the royalties. That’s just wrong. Millions of dollars every year, dollars that should be supporting our government and aboriginal governments.

We must not forget the control of our lands and resources, and regulating access to our land, and ensuring that the environment is protected. I believe we can do a better job than the federal government.

Doing this work means hundreds of new jobs in the Northwest Territories and all the benefits that will come with them. There will be opportunities for our people. In the long run I believe Northerners will be doing even the highly technical jobs that would be filled with Southerners first. Growth means opportunity.

We’re still years from getting that control, that money that those jobs when the agreement-in-principle is signed. Signing this is the next step toward finally getting this job done. We need to have the courage to move ahead, the courage to make improvements, to make the deal and improvements for all of our people.

I’m in favour of the AIP. I believe we can work together with aboriginal governments on a better deal for all of us. There’s just great potential in this benefit for all communities.

We just finished doing our business plans. We all know how tight this government’s finances are. We know how hard it’s going to make the needs of our communities for jobs, education and health care. In the long run devolution can help us meet these needs and we must be thinking about the long run, not just the short-term political agendas.

Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to speak to you about the school playground in Fort Simpson. This fall, at the start of the school year, many parents and children at Bompas Elementary and Thomas Simpson School in Fort Simpson were concerned about the state of the schools’ playground. It seems that, especially over the summer months, the playground was used by drinkers, marked up by graffiti artists, and generally vandalized. There were broken liquor bottles on the ground and rude pictures marked on the buildings and equipment. There was litter and garbage everywhere.

Some parents and children helped to clean the playground. Local school staff and Public Works and Services staff have made a good effort to get the playground clean and ready for the start of the school year. Public Works and Services and the RCMP are looking at ways to increase the security of the playground so that it is not used for drinking parties in the summer.

The parents group met with myself and Mr. Sean Whelly, the mayor of Fort Simpson, and detailed their dissatisfaction with the state of the school grounds. I did take the time to inform the Minister of Education and the Minister of Public Works and Services for immediate action to address these concerns. I’m glad that they were both responsive and corrected some items, as well as a big thanks to the staff of the school and parents who saw a need and made the effort to respond.

The question remains: How could we have let our school playground and facilities become this littered and in a mess? There must be a plan in place to ensure that this never happens again. The community takes pride in our school; our government must recognize this as well. At the appropriate time I will raise this issue with our Ministers.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Yakeleya, your time for your Member's statement has expired.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted

I say to Mr. Premier, give the people the respect and dignity to have a say in their destiny. Give each resident in the North the opportunity to voice their opinions on this deal.

We must move forward on the path of unity and sometimes this takes time. That’s what we have today: time to know how this deal is going to go down in history to be proud or to be chapters of

regrets. I ask the government to take their time on this deal.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we know, the transfer of the Public Housing Program to the Department of Education, Culture and Employment experience did not work. The transfer was meant to harmonize the Public Housing Program and the Income Support Program, but this was not achieved and, if anything, it had the opposite effect and created much more problems for public housing tenants.

As a result, the Public Housing Program was transferred back to the NWT Housing Corporation; however, the old rules are still in place from before the transfer took place and now remain in place. It is these guidelines that have been the source of all the problems. So what we thought as MLAs was a victory by moving the program back was short lived.

Under these guidelines there are more and more public housing tenants now continuing to accumulate greater arrears. These tenants who are already finding it difficult to make ends meet are now slowly losing hope of ever being free of the thousands of dollars of rental arrears. In many communities unemployed tenants are being charged maximum or economic rent because they are not following the rules that we as MLAs thought were thrown out with the transfer back to the local housing organizations. However, this was not the case. Many of these tenants are still the same tenants that were in public housing before the transfer to ECE and now, because of the new rules, they find themselves continuing to accumulate arrears.

This government must completely correct the mistakes made by past governments and must fully move back to the old system where tenants on income support or tenants who are simply unemployed are charged $32, not $1,800. I thought this government understood the problem was not with the people that were delivering the program, it was the program itself. We must go back to the original program.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My statement today is very similar to that of my colleague Mr. Beaulieu.

Over the summer, since the last time we got together, I had an opportunity to travel to many communities in the Northwest Territories and I talked with a lot of different people, both on committee travel and other related business. One of the common concerns that became evident as I was travelling around talking to the different residents of the Northwest Territories is housing.

There were two issues that came up more than others and the first one was the number of vacant public housing units and the number of vacant houses that the Housing Corporation has available for sale. Last week the Minister made a statement where he talked specifically about some of these vacant units and the hard work that the department and the Housing Corporation were doing to try to liquidate and move these vacant houses out. I look forward to following up on that work and seeing what’s done in that area.

The other area of concern was arrears. A significant number of public housing tenants have gained and developed significant arrears, as my colleague mentioned, since the program moved from Housing Corp to Education and then back to the Housing Corp. These arrears are a big problem, because if you’re under arrears you don’t have an ability to access any of the other programs that the Housing Corp offers. So until we liquidate some of these arrears or the people pay back some of these arrears, they’re going to continue to have housing problems.

The big problem in this area is that because of the situation that my colleague described, is a number of individuals have what some people consider to be false arrears; they’re not actually in arrears. If they had been assessed in a timely manner and appropriately to begin with, they never would have developed these arrears. So what needs to happen is the Housing Corp needs to go and review these individuals’ files on an individual basis, those individuals who have arrears, to determine if, in fact, these individuals have arrears or whether they are these fake arrears that some people have exist out there.

Later today I will be asking the Minister responsible for the Housing Corp if they will go back and look at some of these arrears and determine which ones are real, which ones are not, and find a process to liquidate the ones that aren’t real if they, in fact, exist. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Item 4, returns to oral questions. Item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it gives me great honour to recognize Maryann Ross, the vice-president of the Gwich’in Tribal Council. Welcome, Maryann.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes, Mr. Robert McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would also like to recognize a constituent of Inuvik Twin Lakes, Maryann Ross. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Item 6, acknowledgements. Item 7, oral questions. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. During my Member’s statement I was talking about some of these perceived arrears that public housing tenants have in the Northwest Territories. As I said, there are some people that believe that a number of these arrears aren’t, in fact, real. I would like to ask the Minister responsible some questions about those potential arrears. Has any analysis been done within the Housing Corp to determine whether or not this is, in fact, true? Are there some individuals who have possibly unreal arrears or have we done any assessment to determine that, in fact? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have begun the work of looking at the arrears that were accumulated during the transfer over to ECE. We have noticed that the arrears did increase significantly during that time, so we are working on trying to find a way that we can get these arrears identified and have them dealt with. Thank you.

I was wondering if the Minister could give me a bit of a timeline as to when he thinks that work might be done and if those individuals are identified to have arrears that aren’t in fact real, what’s going to be done to help offset those arrears.

Mr. Speaker, this would probably be a fairly lengthy process because we’d almost have to go on a file-by-file basis. But with the tenants starting to come back to the LHOs to

get their assessments done, there’s an opportunity for them to verify their income that they had during that time and adjustments will be made on the arrears. Thank you.

That’s good to know and I’m happy to hear that. I’m curious, will there be any sort of public awareness campaign or anything done to encourage the individuals who might be in arrears to come forward with this information in order to identify areas where they may, in fact, not owe large sums of money so that they can get back on a financial pathway, to a positive financial pathway? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, as far as an official public awareness campaign, there are no plans for that right now. We are working with tenants as they start to go back to the LHOs for the assessment. They are being told some of the processes that they could go through. In forums like this particular one and in my travels throughout the Territories this summer and different assemblies I went to, I did the same message that we had to start working on the arrears and there was an opportunity for tenants who accumulated arrears during the transfer over to ECE to come back, get their income verified, and adjustments will be made. Thank you.