I’ll have to hope that between now and the end of August we could do a quick look at those, the core needs survey, to see if it’s there, to see the numbers come down. The Minister is confident, so I hope that the Minister does make sure the numbers come down in my region, because we certainly want to see that.

I want to ask the Minister about creating programs for the core needs. One of them that other Members talked about was the seniors program. Some of the programs that used to be in the communities for the seniors, and I like what the Minister said that there’s possibly some discussion around maybe having the local housing authorities actually have somebody in the organization to look after just primarily the seniors. You’re also up against some qualified people in the communities that could take that on as a job. There’s a fine line in terms of how do we work that. For me what I want to make sure is that the seniors are being taken care of, either by the contracting from housing or the local housing authority themselves. Seniors should have somebody going around to their places and checking off that their furnaces are being checked, their water lines are being checked, their fuel tanks are being looked after. Things like that they know they can rely on one Steady Eddy coming around the units and saying this is what we’re going to do and this is what we’re going to look at and take care of themselves. That’s what I’m focusing on. Who does it? Well, work out the funding that will hire somebody to do that. That’s a real big movement forward to looking after seniors in our small communities. That’s what I’m thinking about in terms of a seniors program. There are other programs out there, but really the seniors are asking for somebody to help them with some of the maintenance of their building.

They are also programs out there that the seniors are not really being told about or being explained well enough in their languages to apply for them or look for them. The Minister and I had a little bit of an exchange earlier on the land claim tenure in terms of helping the seniors. They sometimes just want to know why they’re not being looked after. They don’t know if their application has been rejected or if they really understand why their applications are being rejected. I’d like to see something here that really dedicates their time to our elders, because most of our elders speak their first languages, which are Aboriginal languages.

We need to sit down with them and talk to them about it.

I’m hoping that the Housing Corporation could look at a way to put together a seniors program for all seniors to be taken care of. That will be a big boost for the Housing Corporation with our seniors.