Mr. Speaker, I am a little nonplussed, I guess, by the Minister’s response that he would choose to ignore the request of a standing committee. I want to quote from the letter that was sent to the Hon. Robert R. McLeod sometime in January. The date is not evident here, but from the chair of the Standing Committee on Social Programs, and the chair said, “committee members are very interested in the recommendations made in the JRP report on the Mackenzie Gas Project and want both the opportunity to provide input in the development of a response and an opportunity to review the response before it is final.”

I guess from that I would like to reiterate to the Minister and ask the Minister why, in the light of that letter, would he ignore that request and not advise the chair of the Standing Committee on Social Programs. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I have the letter right here. It is from the chair of the Standing Committee on Social Programs. There is no reference to the NEB in that letter. I assume that the Standing Committee on Social Programs is only interested in the Joint Review Panel recommendations. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I guess I have to then ask the Minister of ITI how he can say that that response that was filed with the NEB did not reference the recommendations from the Joint Review Panel. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I am just going by the letter that I received from the Standing Committee on Social Programs. As my colleague the Minister of ENR indicated, we are quite prepared to do a joint briefing with the different committees. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the offer from both Ministers to have a

briefing. I think it is something that absolutely is necessary. It will certainly forestall the lack of feeling that we are being left out over here on this side of the House.

I wonder if I could ask the Minister how the response was filed without any input from Regular Members. What was the rationale for that? Thank you.

I guess there were a number of reasons. First and foremost is we were working under very tight timelines and if we didn’t file by February 11th we would have forgone the

opportunity to appear before the different panel hearings. We didn’t want to be like the federal government where three federal departments that are intervening did not respond because they don’t support the pipeline. So as a responsible government, it was incumbent upon us.

We have to recognize that through NEB we are very limited in scope as to what we can respond on. We’re talking about the technical aspects with regard to construction of the pipeline and toll rates and development of the anchor fields. We can’t introduce any new material, so it’s quite restrictive. Also, it is still unclear as to how information would be handled because of the fact that there are three Members that are interveners and there is the Clerk and the legal lawyers working on what kind of process we can establish. That hasn’t been finalized as of yet.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are to the Minister of the Housing Corporation. Over the last number of months and years, actually years, I received a number of complaints and inquiries from constituents who have secured employment recently and already live in social housing units, or from constituents who have jobs and only recently managed to get a social housing unit. Many are single people just starting out, single parents or families with young children. The problem is that as soon as they get a job or those who have jobs move into social housing, they are assessed the maximum rent that the program follows.

My question is to the Minister of Housing. When we impose the rent increases for people living in social housing who manage to get a job, it may be counterproductive encouraging people to be self-reliant. Can the Minister tell this Assembly when he’ll release the rental review report and get some good discussions from Members on this side on how we’re going to deal with this issue?

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are planning on undertaking a review of the rent scale. I’ve pointed that out before. We are looking to come to committee with the results. We are planning on having it ready for review by the end of this fiscal year.

I look forward to the review of the rent scale report by the end of this fiscal year. Will the Minister then look at if the discussion should come well within the committees and have some good discussions to look at this problem? Will he come forward with bringing it to Cabinet to implement what recommendations we have that will support families and single parents in small communities?

First of all I have to clarify. I said fiscal year, but it was the upcoming fiscal year and not the end of this particular fiscal year. So the 2010-2011 fiscal year. I apologize for that.

It is a concern that we have heard far and wide, is the rent people are being charged once they’ve gained employment. We always want to make sure that if we’re housing people, we try and work out the Homeownership Program so a lot of these people can graduate into the Homeownership Program. Housing tries very hard to make sure all the tenants are adequately housed and, with the review of the rent scale, we’re looking to make some improvements and listen to what we’ve been hearing from the Members in the Legislative Assembly.

Thank you for the clarification of the fiscal years. In saying that, that is quite a length of time between now and the years that the Minister quoted. I guess this is an issue that will be out there a bit. How do we deal with this issue? Because I think this issue is pressing. How do we look at issues that we can support families today who want to be productive people in their communities, yet at the same time this issue here of assessing the maximum rent when they’re still over their heads for them being contributors to the people in their communities?

We try very hard to make sure that all the people are adequately housed. There are 19 tenants across the Northwest Territories out of 2,400 public housing units that are paying maximum rent. That’s a good number. These are the folks we tried to design the Homeownership Program for so that they could graduate from public housing into home ownership. We’re making every attempt to make sure that we work with these people, because we hear the argument that sometimes the rent is too high and

it’s a detriment to getting a job. We don’t want to be able to hear those arguments anymore.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you. I wouldn’t mind having a list of these 19 people who are paying the maximum rent, because I’ve been hearing that as soon as they get a job in my riding, that the rent goes right up. It discourages people from working and to be in social housing. I know they want to be in these units and hopefully they can apply and be successful in these applications. I have a hard time in this. I’m here to say this is something that seems like it’s not taken very seriously by the departments here.

I’d like to know how we look at this issue. Can I get a list of the 19 tenants?

I’m not going to be able to provide the Member with the names of these 19 tenants. I can provide some of the regions that they’re in, but as far as names go with the information and everything, we have to be careful. We have to understand that maximum rent in the communities could be as high as $2,300, but that doesn’t mean that somebody who has a job is going to pay the $2,300. It’s based on the income that they’re making. I will commit to the Member that I’ll get him some information and sit down with him.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are to the Minister of ITI with regard to my Member’s statement yesterday and looking at the possibility of supporting the people in Haiti by providing them shelter. As I noted yesterday in my Member’s statement, there are over 160 tents in the canvas shop in Fort McPherson in inventory. This government committed $50,000 to Haiti, but I think the demand right now is shelter. As we can see from the pictures on television, these people are simply using tarps and tying them together for shelter. I think the latest statistics state that there’s over a million people without shelter.

I’d like to ask the Minister of ITI if he has had any discussions with External Affairs or the federal government or the Canadian Military on the possibility of taking these tents to Haiti to get them to the people who need them.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.

I think that’s a great idea and we are always looking for a market for our products. I think that would be an excellent way to promote the tents and the products of the Northwest Territories. The main thing is it’s operating as a business, so we would have to find the money to pay for the tents. I think we would perhaps do that through a supp of some sort if we get the necessary support.

There’s been hundreds of millions of dollars raised through charity by people across Canada for which the federal government, I believe, matched $50 million. There is a lot of money in the system. My understanding is that only something like 35 percent of the money has actually made its way to Haiti. There’s some 65 percent still sitting and that hasn’t been expended. I think that’s the area we should be focusing on. So I’d like to ask the Minister, or even through this government, have we seriously made the offer to the country of Haiti through the Government of Canada or External Affairs for the Canadian Military to find a way to get these tents from Fort McPherson to Haiti, and at the end of the day, who’s going to pay for it? That’s another matter, but I think the key situation here is let’s get those tents to the people who need it. Thank you.

I guess the hardest part would be the logistics of getting 160 tents from Fort McPherson to Haiti. Right off the top of my head, I would expect we could probably do it on a backhaul from Inuvik or one of the trucks that are going back. I know that one of the local airlines, First Air, has provided a couple of their Hercs free of charge to assist in Haiti, so that’s one avenue. I guess another avenue is to get the military to fly it out of Inuvik. Those are some of the logistics that we would have to look at, Mr. Speaker.