Mr. Chairman, the Minister is correct in terms of the responsibility once the materials are...who takes care of the materials. Sometimes it seems to be something of a glitch in my region where materials were ordered but not all materials are in the package. It seems to happen in several other communities. That raises a concern in terms of getting material, especially for ours where roads are only during the winter months, two months out of the year and the rest you have to fly material. It gets quite costly. I am glad to hear the Minister saying that other contractors are going to be compensated, that it is not their responsibility to have the materials.
I want to ask the Minister in terms of negotiating the work to the communities. It is quite difficult and challenging for some of the communities. If the negotiated contract is something that could be real each year in terms of looking at some of the difficulties that the communities have, because sometimes Housing really does a lot of work to improve its relationship with the communities. Sometimes it is very difficult for communities to meet the expectations of Housing, because it comes down to dollars in terms of the operation. Sometimes they want to do well. It just becomes very difficult for them to perform. It becomes an automatic you can’t have a negotiated contract in this community because it has been done before and it doesn’t do any good to people who want houses in the community. Sometimes it comes to a standstill.
That is what we don’t want to do. We want to build relationships with our community with Housing. Sometimes that is the only economic opportunity coming into the regions and communities. The
people who come in and win the tendering process, especially if they come from outside of the community, outside the region, there are people coming from Hay River and Inuvik who are bidding in the Sahtu who are winning contracts, but the price is not very high to pay labour. They expect us to work for those types of dollars. We get complaints on both sides. On the other hand, they put houses up pretty fast. You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. It is really difficult. At the end of the day, we want to see where our communities can benefit.
I think I will leave it at that. I know the Minister has other cases like this around the North. I guess what I want to look at is how do we do as much as we can to support the local businesses that have the capability, the resources.
I talked earlier about this young guy who is just finishing school. He wants to be an electrician. He is a really good electrician apprentice, if you could call it. He is working every day. He comes home and talks to his mom. The contractor is happy with him. He said this young guy could be a real good electrician if he can get to school if we had an apprenticeship program where he would work within the local housing association or somewhere in that area. These are things that we need to look at, I guess.
I know Housing has money just to build a house. I’m not too sure we have a real good comprehensive package that would create a career for some of these young workers in our communities such as drywalling, painting and framing. Right now the mandate is for the Minister to put houses on the ground. Whoever does them, you have to put houses on the ground. Sometimes the other mechanisms are not there to support some of the communities’ other initiatives that might be out of the mandate of the Housing Corporation. That is where MLAs get a lot of calls and saying, what can we do to help our communities? I will leave it at that, Mr. Chairman.