Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are directed to the Minister of the
Housing Corporation in conjunction to a written question that I requested of the Minister to give me information on the negotiated contracts with Housing. Mr. Speaker, it’s important to realize that capital projects are the means of developing a lot of our community economies, especially building capacity and also bringing down the high cost of living. More importantly, it’s bringing down our social costs for the high unemployment numbers we have in our communities, and also developing the local economies and developing our local workforce to give them the opportunities so that they can build their skills in the areas of apprenticeships, and more importantly, give them the opportunity, in most cases, for their first job.
Mr. Speaker, I’d just to ask the Minister, in light of the information that I received, in five years with three negotiated contracts with an expense of $800,000 or $876,000, but in the same period the contracts for the same three communities were $9.67 million, Mr. Speaker, it shows you that the distribution of wealth in capital projects in the Northwest Territories is not really being expended in our communities but outside our communities. So I’d like to ask the Minister exactly what is his department doing to remedy this situation so that we can see the return of our capital investments in our communities and they stay in our communities.