Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I just want to go over a couple of things that I mentioned in my opening comments. Most particularly what’s troubling for me in my last tour was that there is no seniors program specifically designed for seniors. It really came to light on a couple occasions where there’s one senior, he had a broken furnace, he had a broken hot water tank, so we asked the Housing Corporation about emergency repairs and it turns out that he is probably like many other people throughout the North where he has exhausted all programming areas that the Housing Corporation has, like CARE,
RRAP or ERP. He used every known program that is out there to help repair his house and now he has to use his old age security to pay for much needed repairs to his furnace, which is up and running. I don’t believe the hot water tank was, but, like I said, this may be a typical situation. I know that before, we did have a seniors home repair subsidy especially for these types of situations. The Minister can correct me, but I don’t believe it was a one-time access either. This is about small, little repairs that elders and seniors need in small, remote communities. In larger communities, if you just have to replace a filter or a pump, it is easy to do, but in the smaller communities there is a cost of transportation, and timing becomes an issue too. Then there will be additional freight costs if there is an actual charter that had to be done to fly someone in to do the repair.
I believe it had worked well. I don’t know when the Seniors Repair Program existed or why it was cancelled, because I had been educating elders and seniors in the past few years and I am supportive of them, but the response I get is thank you very much for the inquiry, but we don’t have a specific seniors program. They are going to have to file an application with everybody else under these other programs.
I think we only have one senior kind of related program. I think that is when they help clean the furnaces annually, which is a good program. I certainly would like to see more of it. Our seniors should not be relegated to the rest of the population. I believe that we should have a seniors home-specific repair program. I look forward to working with the department, if we can do something about that and move towards that.
Another thing about district operations that I believe will be helpful, I really have faith in this appeal process that will be undertaken on April 1st . The
Minister said April 1st is the deadline. It would be
nice to see some programming detail about that, as MLA, or perhaps he just has to send it over to the Social Programs committee. I certainly would like to see a mechanism on how it would work, especially addressing old arrears, Mr. Chairman. That is a concern.
Many of my constituents are applying for programming based on arrears, which is a guideline and a policy that they cannot access certain programs unless they address those arrears. The mortgage repayment plan is a very great idea. Some people do get behind and fall into arrears. Here is the opportunity to refinance it and reprofile it. There are some cases, I think actually there are many cases where the constituent or the client is actually disputing work that had happened or work that didn’t happen, value for work, construction techniques and they are of the mind that I am not paying until this is resolved, but now it is 15 years
old. How do we go back that far and give them a fair hearing, Mr. Chairman? How do we give them a fair place for them to speak their case? I have always said that they are stating their case to the person that told them no in the first place. I don’t believe that is very fair. I believe that they deserve to be heard. The facts should be put on the table, access to as much information as they can and really give this appeals process a good go, because that is all the constituents are asking for. I would like to see what kind of mechanism there is to address a wrong if indeed the appeals process does feel they are wrong. My thinking about it is that if they had $15,000 worth of work 10 years ago and there really was the case that only $7,000 got done, but on the Housing Corporation’s books it shows $15,000, how do you address that? I believe the constituent believes, as well, I don’t mind paying for $7,000 worth of work, but my bill says $15,000, Mr. Chairman. So how do they address that? That is just one example of how I believe that appeals system can work and it is going to be independent as well. They really have to have an independent way to look and see how they best address their concerns, Mr. Chairman. With that, I will give the Minister an opportunity to respond on those two issues there. Thank you.