Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Over the course of the last three or four years when the NWT Housing Corporation amalgamated its programs and services into four distinct packages, they had some real nice acronyms: HELP, CARE, et cetera. What it didn’t address was the need for seniors in those programming packages. Previously we had a strong seniors package within the NWT Housing Corporation. There was the Elders on the Land Program, some repairs programs, some maintenance programs. They were all distinct to help seniors in our communities and regions.

The last couple of years I have found that as I deal with seniors’ issues, I support them as they apply for Housing Corporation programs and services and I keep getting the response that there’s no specific seniors program that covers them at all. I go to ask further and they say, in reality, there are no seniors program, it was all deleted. Their applications are based on the general population.

I don’t think it’s fair. I think that we had distinct seniors and elders programming for the very reason to take care of our elders and seniors. I really think it was an oversight, a mistake by the Housing Corporation to lump them together with the general population. I don’t think they really thought this through.

There are many issues that myself as MLA and other Regular Members, and even the Ministers as MLAs themselves address many of the same concerns I’m sure in their specific ridings. I believe that we should move back to some distinct senior repairs and maintenance programming at the NWT Housing Corporation.

A lot of the issues that are out there are that they must address arrears. I spoke about having an independent appeals system to address arrears but our seniors’ arrears that are showing up are 20 years old. It counts against them when they apply for programming. I’m not too sure how this works, but somewhere in our laws and legislation, it might be federal, we have a statute of limitations that’s only seven years. I don’t know how they can apply something that happened 20 or 30 years ago against our seniors. That’s a real inequity there and it’s not really fair. I believe that must be addressed.

I don’t want to go too much further other than there’s a need that’s missing. It worked before. I believe we should introduce it. I look to the support of my colleagues and this House in urging our government to reintroduce this program and make it work for our seniors and elders in our communities.