Mr. Chair, I wanted to say to the Minister here and the staff here that the housing units that we have in our communities, I certainly look forward to the Minister’s suggestions in his opening statements in further detail as to how we’re going to help people in those units, help people get into those units. We were in Deline and a statement was made at a leadership meeting with the Premier. Again, there are 100 units, I think, and there were 50 percent that were vacant. A lot of people were out of those units. That was just a statement in the meeting. I just want to clarify that and close that number. So I want to see how we can get people into those units.

I read with interest the Minister’s statement yesterday on a strategy to fill those units up. There are 82 units that are vacant in the Northwest Territories. On average you can put four to a family, that’s 82 units. That’s about over 300 people that the Minister wants to put into public housing. So I’m very interested to see how we could help the Minister put people into these vacant units. It means doing some creative policy writing and some support. I look forward to working with the Minister on that.

The public housing in our communities, as Mr. Beaulieu had alluded to, is something that needs to be looked at. I made earlier comments in my Member’s statements about a young man that is doing his best to make it in life and he’s working hard. However, because of the current policies right now, he’s paying $1,800 a month for a one-bedroom unit and it’s very stressful for him because he’s working to try to make it. He doesn’t have much furniture in his house; groceries are very high in Tulita. So if we can help these young people a little bit, as you know the unemployment is very high in some of our smaller communities and if we could somehow manage to make it worthwhile for these young fellows to work and stay in a job, I think we’d be doing a lot of them a lot of good.

I also wanted to let the Minister know that I talked to another constituent of mine in the small communities. This constituent is a long-term employee of the Department of Education through the Sahtu educational board. Actually, she’s a cultural teacher. This person has lived in the housing units for a bit. It’s one of those old units that were built in the late ‘70s and because of that, he’s paying the maximum rent of $2,400 and at the same time is looking after her mother who is in her 90s. She’s doing her best to keep up with the rent. However, it’s costing her quite a bit and she’s putting just about half of her rent payment down and Housing is causing her a lot of stress by telling her that she needs to pay up or she’s going to be

asked to move out or be evicted. Her mother is in her 90s and she doesn’t know if her mother will be around today or tomorrow or next month. She doesn’t know. That’s a lot of stress on her. She’s one of these long-term employees with education. She’s not going anywhere. She said if it wasn’t for my mom, I would have told housing, yes, I’ll be out of there and find something, but she says her mom is bedridden just about. She says where would I go and it’s causing me a lot of stress with Housing calling me. She says I’m doing the best I can, and she doesn’t drink. This lady has almost 20 years with education. She comes from a generation of when you have a job, you keep a job and you go to work and you have to go to work. So she’s saying why is Housing doing this to me. I’ve been living in this unit for a long time. You know, she’s one of these tenants that lived in these houses and raised her family. Now all of her children are gone. So I think we need to look at some of these situations with some tender loving care for some of these people in our houses.

Then you swing to the other end of the spectrum where people are living in these units and they’re not taking care of them. You see them in our communities. So how do we deal with that too? People are telling me that some of the young people are ruining these units and we’re paying for them and we’re not penalizing strong enough or we’re not doing them any favours. How are these young people getting into these units? You know, someone told me that they can’t even fix the doorknob. They had to call Housing to come over and fix a doorknob for them. Now that is really, really sad when we’re teaching young people not to take care of themselves or help themselves.

I hope with the Minister, we can work on some of these things. Housing is very important to us. You have an important job for us in our community. So how do we do things to help these young people and let them know that other people need these units? If I was to wreck my house, I would have to pay out of my own pocket, but somehow we tell them is it okay to kick the doors or smash the windows because we’ll come by and we’ll fix it for you. Maybe not today, but maybe in six months. We need to change that and Housing I think is in the position to do that.

It may seem hard and it may seem harsh for us as leaders and it might even cost some votes if we’re looking at an election, but let’s not worry about that. Let’s worry about our assets, let’s worry about what kind of houses we have and take pride in them. Like you said, it costs $41 million and we are paying for it as taxpayers. Society at large is paying for it. We have to look at that too.

The last part is to help some of these older seniors that are in their 90s and 70s and 80s because in the 60s and 50s they talked about units, in the 70s

they should be in public housing. They have a different recollection of houses as compared to 2011. We have a wide range of interpretation of housing. We’re doing our best to help them.

I want to say to the Minister that I look forward to working with you. I look forward to how you deal with the vacant units in my region, how you deal with the public and home ownership units, how we get these people back into these units and work with them to look after their place. We need to do that. That may require more and more meetings face to face. I look forward to the Minister coming to the Sahtu to talk to the Sahtu people and sitting down and putting some solutions together. He’s got a big job ahead of him. I look forward to going through the budget detail by detail.