Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister Robert McLeod.

Mr. Chairman, one of the basis for the capital allocation in the communities is the community survey. Housing needs survey is the component of that. I think we try to tailor this coming up infrastructure delivery on part of the core need. There are also things that are taken into consideration, the priorities of the community leadership, whether it be homeownership or public housing.

The Member is right; we do have some communities that don’t have LHOs. We are finding that with some of the units that we are going to convert into public housing are in communities that have no LHOs. We are always open to partnerships.

We have had some discussions with some of the communities where the Aboriginal government there are able to provide us with some services, be it administration if they are able to do some of the maintenance, we will enter into a partnership agreement with them. That way it is easier for us as a corporation because we don’t have to be bringing people into that community. The opportunity is there to work out partnerships with communities and there are a few other factors we take into consideration. Land is always another huge factor. The program intake, some communities may have more applicants than others. The needs survey plays a large part. I know the numbers in the past needs survey didn’t reflect very well. It went from 16 to 19 percent, but I have said a couple of times I am quite confident that if we were to do another needs survey, then I think we will see a decline in the numbers. I am quite confident in that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I know in the past, one of the ways we try to work with communities that didn’t have LHOs is work out what we call community service agreements with them that they have sort of a... Give them $10,000 or $15,000 and let them hire somebody internally that work with the local regional staff. When they come in, they have somebody there that they can talk to, sort of a liaison position for those communities.

I think that communities, if they realize that they have a say and they basically have a stake in the infrastructure that is in their communities, you will see them take better care of it, knowing that they are responsible, they are going to have a say who is going to go in there, what repairs have to be done to the different units, where people can come to and I think it’s something that we’re looking at through the small community initiatives in regard to the one-stop shop sort of thing where we have program officers now in different communities. I

think the same concept can work with the Housing Corporation where we don’t have LHOs, and I think it’s because of those units and those communities we hear a lot of outcry of why they’re not being required or why they’re being boarded up and a lot of it is because you’re so far from the regional centres that you don’t have people on the ground that you can actually talk to unless you physically fly in there. In most cases that does not work for most communities.

Again, I think that’s something that we should be looking at to try to embrace the communities and get the communities to take some ownership of these units in their communities where we don’t have LHOs, but work out a relationship where we can work in conjunction with either the local band governments or whoever the government structure is in that community. Thank you.

The Member makes a very good point, because it is our intent to try and work with those communities that don’t have LHOs and try to come up with some kind of a service agreement as the Member had mentioned. We find that lately we have been making some good progress. We have some communities where there is actually quite a large number of vacant units in there and we’ve kind of entered into an agreement with them to keep an eye on those units. So we’re making progress on that front and we’re looking forward to, as we converge some of these units into public housing, working with the local band or local government. Well, the local band is the local government in this particular community. So we look forward to working with them to come up with a partnership agreement where they would look after probably administration and the maintenance, because they have the qualified people to look after the maintenance of these units. So it will be beneficial to the community and beneficial to the NWT Housing Corp. Thank you.

One of the issues, just in response to the Minister’s response earlier in regard to the questions raised by the Members, is the whole area of the seniors repair programs. I think a lot of challenges we’re seeing in our communities is we wait for a lot of these contracts to be let and you’re only talking $1,000 or $2,000 of any emergency repairs that have to be done. I think if we could work out arrangements with the local maintenance staff through the local LHOs and give them the money and ask that they include those seniors in those communities as part of their ongoing maintenance anyway, because every LHO does their maintenance in the summer months, they hire extra staff to come on side, they hire summer students. Again, I think this is one way that you can keep those revenues in the communities, but also achieve the results of offering that service to the seniors that are eligible for the programs, and we know who they are. Again, that money stays in the

community; it generates employment during the summer months.

In most cases somebody will clean out someone’s water tank or clean the furnace, servicing type of work. I think that could be done locally through the LHO maintenance staff. Again, I think the seniors would greatly appreciate that, because it seems like, you know, they hound you all summer as the MLA because they applied on it and they didn’t hear back from anybody. Then by the time the person comes around, it’s usually they show up in the fall time when it’s getting cold and they come in and they’re gone again, but if anything happens, they’ll come running back to the MLA and say, look, they didn’t do it right. At least if it’s the LHO, it’s in the community. They’re there, they can come back and finish off whatever repairs have to be made. So I think that’s something that we should consider in regards to offering that to the LHOs and, personally, I don’t think the LHO maintenance staff have a problem with that. If anything, they’re probably glad to help the seniors in their communities, especially dealing with their maintenance issues. Thank you.

Where there’s opportunity for us to maybe work with the local LHOs and maybe add these seniors units onto preventative maintenance schedule that they do in the summer, there’s opportunity. I mean, there is a good option that I could commit to the Member that we’ll discuss with a lot of the LHOs. Where some communities may have a local contractor that’s able to do the work, we don’t want to cut the feet out from under him, so we’d have to give him an opportunity maybe to give us a price. But in some cases where they can’t do it, then it’s a good option and we’ll work with the local LHOs, because I don’t think in most communities, especially the smaller communities, it’s going to add a lot onto the work that they already do and they probably appreciate it, and the seniors probably appreciate it a lot more because they’d have somebody there that they’re quite familiar with doing the work. So I’ll commit to working on that. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Next on my list, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to ask questions on the needs survey on this page. I don’t know where else or what other area. I know it’s in programs, but I thought this would be an okay spot under the corporate summary to ask about the needs survey.

Mr. Chairman, I’m wondering if the Minister could provide some detail on the needs survey, and by that I’m referring to some sort of work plan I suppose as a result of the needs survey, because I want to see if there’s an intention to not use the numbers. I know that if we’re just using numbers, the greatest need by number would be Yellowknife,

but, rather, using percentages, the fact that in some communities the percentage and need is half the community. So I’m wondering if the Minister could tell me if there’s a community-by-community strategy as it pertains to the last needs survey document, and by that I mean is there any intention to address the communities that have the greatest need as a priority.

Minister of Housing Corporation.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We recognize as well as the Member that the biggest need percentage-wise obviously is in some of the smaller communities. So we recognize that and we try to tailor our infrastructure plan to that. We continue to try to adjust this on an ongoing basis and we continue to work with the other departments. So I think we’re finding ways that we can incorporate the needs survey into how we allocate units and it’s something I think we’ll continue to do in the future. We have to, I mean, we hear it as well as most people that, especially from the MLAs and I think we heard the Member for Nunakput talk about one of his communities. It’s even information like that that’s helpful to us, because he said we need a unit or two in our communities. So we look at all those factors and try and tailor our infrastructure and make sure that we distribute our resources evenly and fairly into those communities that are in most need. Thank you.

Staying with the needs survey, I’m wondering if the Minister is looking at the need incidences, and by that I’m referring to affordability, adequacy and suitability. I’m assuming that we address suitability by adding bedrooms. By adding bedrooms I mean adding units. I’m assuming we address adequacy by fixing houses. I’m assuming we fix affordability by providing affordable housing. So I’m wondering if the needs survey document or this corporation is using its own needs survey document to ensure that they’re addressing suitability issues with the appropriate resources and adequacy issues with the appropriate resources. So I’m saying that in small communities, including Fort Resolution and Lutselk’e, that our issue is adequacy. I feel like we have inventory, but the inventory is not in good shape and I’m not talking about the Housing Corporation’s own inventory. Public housing is in fine shape as far as I’m concerned. They’ve got money to fix it and they maintain and they have good staff to maintain the units in both of the communities I represent. My issue is that the units that are privately owned have serious adequacy issues. I’m wondering if the needs survey is also tweaked in that way to follow what the actual incident of need is. Adequacy, suitability or affordability.

We do try and make sure that those communities that are in the most

need are talking about the adequacy of the home ownership programs or the private homeowners. When the Member first started his statement I kept thinking he was referring to our public housing stock, not realizing until he clarified it that he was talking about some of the home ownership issues. Obviously we put a lot of money into the care in the last few years and a lot of the communities were looking at the needs survey. Where there was an adequacy issue, we tried to tailor some of the resources and put more resources into some of these communities. Obviously the homeowners would have to qualify. Again, that’s another big issue. We try to distribute the resources fairly and make sure that some of the communities that are in highest need get a closer look, because we would want those folks in those communities to have their units fixed up. Again, the key issue is that they qualify for the program and the unit will get fixed up.

The last area I’d like to talk about in the needs survey is the area of groups. I’m wondering if the corporation has put more resources into evaluating or assessing the needs survey in the sense that you’re putting seniors, couples, singles, and families of three or more in the family, if the Housing Corporation has done that type of grouping from the 2010 needs survey. I’m wondering if that grouping has happened since the needs survey document was presented to the House.

Mr. Polakoff.

That’s it for questioning on this page.

Page 5-43, NWT Housing Corporation, information item. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to ask the Minister with regard to the federal funding for social housing that’s declining each

year. Can the Minister inform me as to how much money each year the federal government is declining its funding to the Northwest Territories?

Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In 2010-2011, and I’ve used this figure a couple of times, we lost $676,000. In 2011-2012, this upcoming year, we’re looking at $754,895 that we won’t be getting from CMHC. I think cumulative to date we are about $11 million that we’ve declined from CMHC and that’s from 1997-1998 up until now.

That’s quite a considerable amount of money that’s declining. I want to tie this into the core needs housing survey that was done in 2009. Some of the high communities in the number were my area. Listening to the Minister, I was hoping we could match some of the funding that would address some of the core needs in the Northwest Territories. I’m hoping what the Minister’s wishes were if we were to do another survey, I hope to see the numbers come down. That’s what I’m hoping for. I know that won’t happen within the life of this Assembly, again, to do another needs survey.

With this in mind here, the houses that I know that the inadequacy, suitability and affordability is really high in my region. With the decline of the funding, by the year 2038 the funding should be zero from the federal government. Of course, between now and then, other things could happen. I want to ask the Minister about addressing the needs in the Sahtu, because I know the previous core needs survey was supposed to look at that high number and when we did the one in 2009 it was still the highest, close to Nahendeh.

Are we putting enough funding, I guess, to meet the needs to drop the core needs of my region? That’s what I want to ask.

We’re quite confident that with the investment that was made by the federal government and matched by the NWT Housing Corporation I think once we get to the point where we do another community needs survey I think we’re going to see the numbers come down drastically. I keep saying I’m quite confident, so they’re going to have to come down, because we’ve had a lot of investment into all communities and the community needs survey that was just completed here in 2009, as I’ve responded to Mr. Beaulieu, I was saying we’re trying to use some of the numbers from there to help us allocate our resources to those communities that are in higher need so we can bring some of that need down. I think overall if we were to do another needs survey at the end of this construction season or next construction season, I’m very confident that the numbers will come down, because I don’t know if these numbers truly reflect the number of units that

were put on the ground with the investment from the federal government. I don’t think it addresses those at all.

We had put a lot of money into home repairs through the investment that we had from the federal government and matched by the GNWT. I believe once we do another community needs survey we’re going to see quite a difference in the numbers.

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.

We do what we can to try and accommodate our seniors in any way possible. The Preventive Maintenance Program -- when I was responding to Mr. Krutko -- when the opportunity arises, we’ll use folks from the community. It will be a Preventive Maintenance Program and it will be a contract that we would work out for certain types of work. We would have to make sure that the seniors are well aware of that. We try to -- and I think I committed to Mr. Beaulieu during question period at one time -- work with some of the seniors in their first language. We’d be able to so they understand exactly what they’re getting into and what some of the options are. I think we go to great lengths to try and accommodate our seniors as best we can and try to assist our seniors as best we can.