Moving on to page 5-49, financial and infrastructure services, operations expenditure summary. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I note land acquisition and planning is part of this division of responsibility and the budget they have to deliver this. I want to just mention this is an important issue to my constituents, especially in the communities of Ndilo and Dettah. They’re particularly challenging issues because of where the land situation is right now and it’s required to be resolved with respect to establishing a land tenure in order to get the needed housing in place. Really at this time I want to mention that the North Slave office of the Housing Corporation has made considerable progress in recent months and is working hard to catch up on that in both of these communities; some exciting opportunities developing for getting that much needed housing in place this summer. I want to give a little tip of the hat to the Minister and his staff for getting that done. I would just ask, you know, I don’t know if this was a one-off or if we have semi-permanently resolved the land issues for now until they get resolved in a more permanent sense through some claims resolutions.

Minister of Housing.

I appreciate the Member’s tip of the hat. It was some good work done on North Slave’s part to work with his communities to come to a resolution. It’s not something we consider one-off. It’s something that we’d like to do on a regular basis now and I think communities will realize that it’s beneficial to them, too, to work with the corporation and identify land and maybe make land available for units. I think this is going to be an ongoing piece of collaboration between communities and the Housing Corporation. It will be beneficial to both because we want to put the product on the ground and the communities want the product on the ground. This will be beneficial and I think this is going to be a good partnership. It’s something that we’d like to do on a permanent basis.

That’s all I really had. I have had the opportunity to interact with some of the staff working on this. I learned a lot and I thank the Minister for that opportunity. I can’t claim that I still understand it all because the land issue is so complex, but I appreciate learning about it and the efforts being taken to get that resolved. Just a comment.

Thank you. Next on the list is Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a couple of questions here. I noted when we discussed the business plan in the fall that there was a deletion of the funding that was intended for housing for staff. I understand that it’s been moved to another department. I wonder if I can get confirmation of that. Does Housing have any idea of what this other department is going to do with that funding?

Minister of Housing.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This particular figure is not with another department. It was one-time funding for the Housing Corporation. It’s still in our department. We are working with communities, some of the development corporations and that, and I think we had that discussion during the briefing. The money was a one-time figure and it’s declining now and not part of this budget.

Thanks to the Minister for that. I guess it begs the question, what activities are ongoing to create housing for staff in small communities?

I was rushing there. Just a second here. We have had very good uptake from a lot of the communities, the development corporations, the community corporations, the folks out in the community that there was an incentive for them to provide housing for staff. I do have some figures and information that I would be more than willing to share with the Member.

We’ve got presently 16 signed agreements. We have 16 signed agreements. We still have some communities that we’re working with. Some are in progress while some are just putting some plans together. We’ve held the money because they’ve asked us to hold the money as they would like to come up with a plan. But we do have 16 signed agreements and I think this is one that the communities are buying into because they would be able to provide the housing for staff and then they would see the revenue from it.

Thanks to the Minister for that. That’s really encouraging. That’s an area that requires some activity and it’s great to see that the communities are taking an interest and are taking over the responsibility for that kind of housing. My concern is what there is going to be ongoing. If this is going to be one-time funding and there’s no funding in this next 2010-2011 budget for housing for staff, how does the Minister expect that this initiative will be kept alive and that we will be able to involve other communities beyond the 16 that are currently involved?

The 16 that I referred to are 16 signed agreements that we have in place right now. There are still a few more that are working on finalizing their plans and then we’ll sign an agreement with them and that will be part of that $1.5 million. This is the program that requires continued funding. We would have to add that into our budget for the coming year or make monies available, because there does seem to be a great interest in this particular initiative. I can commit to the Member that if the interest is out there and the communities are still involved, we’re always willing to do what we can to be able to fund it, so it is on an ongoing basis.

So to put words in the Minister’s mouth, there is going to be money available if people need it. I’m just kidding.

The other question I had related to arrears and debts and mortgage collections by housing authorities, we discussed this, as well, at business plan time. We were advised that things were improving at that point. The corporation is giving a certain amount of leeway to the local housing organizations and letting them collect as much as possible and then things get turned over to the corporation to kind of go a little further. I’m just wondering if I can get an update from the Minister on how things are going in terms of debt collection and mortgage collection and arrears and so on.

The Member raises a good point. It’s always beneficial if we discuss the arrears and get the message out there, that there are a lot of people that have been coming to the LHOs and making arrangements to start working on their arrears. In most cases with the LHOs it could be as low... I mean, anything that they can pay a

month is usually welcome. We’ve seen cases where folks have started a repayment plan, they’ve honoured their commitment, they still are in some arrears but because they’ve honoured their commitment, they’ve been put back on the waiting list and a few of them have actually got back into public housing and are some of our best tenants now. I think there’s been great improvement here in our arrears and people willing to make the commitment to start paying it off. It’s still a challenge, obviously, but I think more and more we’re seeing out there that folks are serious about trying to write off their arrears, because they realize that it does prevent them in some cases from accessing some programs or getting back into public housing. I think they’ve come to realize that this is a commitment that they need to make. It has improved and we’re looking forward again to the coming year where we can see more of an improvement in the collection of arrears, rental arrears.

Mortgage arrears is still one we’re trying to work with the clients especially, because that is a huge concern when you’re $10 million in mortgage arrears. So we want to work with the clients. The LHOs and Housing Corporation are usually very flexible when people start wanting to make repayment plans. As long as they honour their commitment, then things will usually start falling into place for them. But there has been a great improvement and we’re looking forward to a bigger improvement in the coming year.

Just one last comment. I guess, then, that the Minister would say that this approach, this process is successful and he expects that it will be further successful in this coming year. Is that correct?

That is correct. We’re looking to make great improvement this year. As I mentioned before, we’re hiring some mortgage collection people. That should help. We’re having more and more people approaching us now to work out repayment plans and the message is getting out there that if you want to qualify for some of the programs, then it’s to your best interest to address your arrears issue and you’re usually able to qualify for some of the programs afterwards. So we are looking forward to a big improvement in the coming year and when the Housing Corporation is before this committee again next year I’m hoping that we have some real good solid numbers to report.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Next on my list I have Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The land requirements. Some of the issues that we have with land requirements in some of our communities and because it’s quite complex and

sometimes we don’t get the houses we want built for that year because of the issue with the municipal or, as in our case, with the Sahtu municipal lands there are certain agreements that need to be put in place before the Housing Corporation puts houses in the communities. Sometimes when these agreements don’t come in time because of the schedule, sometimes we’re told that if you don’t get your land, it’s too bad, you can’t have a house in your community, and it goes to another community or doesn’t happen.

I want to ask the Minister about the type of work that’s been done with his corporation on the land acquisition issues in the communities, working closely with the Minister of MACA on how that issue is being handled in that we want houses built in our communities. However, we’re not going to give land away for free to the Housing Corporation or anything like that. We’ve got to come to some kind of agreement to see where those houses can be built in our community. People don’t want to give land away for free, but they also recognize the need to have houses in our communities. It’s a double-edged sword. Is that something this Minister is aware of in the Sahtu region for getting houses?

I hear one of the complaints is that with Housing sometimes they don’t have the land so they can’t build houses in the communities. It doesn’t go too well with our leaders in the community. I want to ask the Minister on that.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. McLeod.

Yes, I’ll have a discussion with the MACA Minister. It is an area we’ve seen a great improvement and I was responding to Mr. Bromley before when I mentioned that there were some issues worked out between his communities and the Housing Corporation to making land available. We were having good discussions with one of the Member’s communities where they’re thinking about making land available. As I said before, putting houses on the ground is something that we do. Land tenure is something we continue to work on. Communities are starting to realize now that it is to their benefit to have land available. We’re not unreasonable. We don’t expect anything for free. Housing never gets anything for free, but we’re willing to work with the communities and try to identify lands so that if they’re allocated houses, there will be no saying that we don’t have the land, we can’t build the house. We never want to get into that situation. So it’s beneficial to both parties to make sure the land is available and we’re making good progress in our dealings with some of the communities that have band lands and other lands of those type.

Mr. Chair, could I then dare say that if these issues are not resolved in terms of the land tenure issues for housing that’s allocated for a

community and they’re still working on a land issue here, that this community, any communities, you know, would they lose their unit? Would it go to another community outside the region, within the region because the units are there? I think sometimes that’s under the impression of the leadership, that if we don’t get this unit, and because we know the urgency and the need for housing, that would make a, what do they call it, a time compressor, compressing time to be a quick decision. Sometimes it’s not good. That’s what I want to clear up.

The other one is that there are long outstanding issues with the community in terms of when the community is just coming to a settlement, and this goes back to some days when they just built houses wherever they were going to build houses. They put their houses up and then later, in the ‘70s, Housing comes in and starts acquiring land and start building public housing units, and some of these verbal agreements that Housing didn’t go back to. So it’s still in some people’s memory in terms of land that Housing took. It’s not theirs but they took it. It’s just the way things were at. That’s why it’s hard for some of the old-timers to really understand what the program is like. Some of the old-timers say, well, we had our old house here and it got ripped down and they put us into a new public housing and we don’t have our land back here. So a lot of issues and that underlying stuff like this here.

Those are some of the things that are being looked at in our communities. I guess the one question I have is for the Minister in terms of units when they’re designated or allocated to a community. I have some information that some of the houses are not there because the land is unavailable and they’re still working out the agreements. So are they still scheduled for that community?

We still want to put the units in the community. Land tenure is a very important issue and we can’t, as the Member actually pointed out as he was speaking, we can’t go to what he said, the day was where Housing...and I don’t think Housing just took anything, but maybe they worked out some agreements with people staying on those particular lands and I think we’re seeing more and more of that today where maybe there was some misinformation or misinterpretation or misunderstanding, but those things can be worked out.

The land tenure is the most important part, because we need to make sure we have proper land tenure so there’s not a dispute down the road saying, you know, we didn’t make an agreement for this land. We thought we had an agreement so we put a house up, and we don’t want to get into a situation where they’re saying put it on skids and pull it away

to another place. It’s in our best interest to make sure that the proper land tenure is there. It’s in the community’s best interest too. We’re starting to see a bit of an improvement in identifying lands for housing, so it’s something we’ll continue to work on. As far as saying that if land is not available you can’t put your unit there, that only makes sense because you can’t just put it up anywhere. We need to have those issues resolved, but we’ll do what we can to make sure they’re resolved before, as a last resort, maybe doing what the Member has alluded to. Thank you.