A lot of the issues that we hear from the groups that we meet with across the Northwest Territories, Housing always has it on its radar. It’s just a matter of working with them to try to find some common ground. I can tell the Member that with the concern that was in Inuvik, I

know staff up there are working with the folks up in Tuk to see what we would be able to do. Thank you.

Thank you. Moving on to 5-55, NWT Housing… Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don’t think it’s any surprise that we have a waiting list for public housing and housing support. Certainly in the Yellowknife area we have a couple of offices, and Yellowknife Housing apparently has a list of 160 or so, also the YWCA has another list of 150 or so. I don’t know if there might be overlap on those at all, but I know these are real. These are exceptional, these are recent and the staff are saying something is going on, we don’t see this sort of thing. What do we do to monitor a waiting list and what can the Minister report on now? Is there any insight yet on the Yellowknife situation? I know the Minister is aware of this. What are we doing to get on top of this? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’ve heard the concern about the waiting list in Yellowknife. I know some of the communities have waiting lists, not quite as large as here. We are planning on doing some work. After we had our briefing the other day, we went back and I was thinking about some of the people who were on a waiting list and I do know that if the requirement, I believe, for some of them that are accessing income support or having income support pay their rent in place they are living now, I think the requirement is to be on the waiting list of the local LHO. So we were planning on doing – and I talked to a couple of Members – some work there to see on the waiting list how many of them are actually in a unit or on the waiting list because they need to be on the waiting list to qualify for some of the programs. So we are going to undertake that work. I’ve seen a couple of the waiting lists. I’ve seen a waiting list of a place that I know quite well, and a lot of people that were on the list are living in units but ECE is paying their rent, and part of the requirement is you have to be on the waiting list with the LHO. So we are going to undertake some work and find out how much overlap there is, and I believe we could come down by probably 30 or 40 percent. Thank you.

I appreciate the Minister. I know he has mentioned this before. I think I’m starting to get some understanding of what he’s saying here. I

think that’s important information to have, an important perspective. Obviously, it still leaves a considerable number of people on the waiting list.

Just to back off to sort of a larger-scale situation, I think it would be really good to try and have our fingers strongly on the pulse of where our people are at in terms of being on waiting lists across the territory. Will the Minister take on to come up with some sort of automated mechanism whereby we can monitor that situation, at any one time know what the situation is and where we are starting to have a situation develop because of resource development there or whatever the case might be? Who knows what might cause those sorts of changes. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, through the information system, we will be able to plug in to the communities. I think we are going to have a pretty good indication of what their waiting lists are like, so we will be able to monitor it a lot closer.

Again, as I was saying before, we have a lot of singles that are on the waiting lists that could be living with somebody but they are just trying to get their own place. We have to check all that information too. I believe, once we do the analysis, we’re going to find that our waiting lists of people that are actually not in a unit are going to come down quite a bit. It is just folks that are waiting to get into a unit. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I have a last question on that aspect. Are we regularly or do we routinely, at some interval, contact the YWCA agencies that would be expected to maintain waiting lists so that we are aware of what they’re hearing and seeing on the ground? Thank you.

We don’t check with them regularly, but I can commit to the Members that we will start following up with not only the YWCA, we have 23 LHOs out there. We can follow up with them on what their waiting lists are like. We have a number of communities without LHOs that we have public housing stock in. We can check with them and see what their waiting lists are like. That way we will have a whole territory-wide indication of what the waiting lists are like across the territory. We will follow up with the Y and see what their waiting lists are like. I can commit to Members that we will check in with all of these groups on a regular basis.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Before we go on to our other MLA for questioning here, the Chair would just like to take a moment to recognize someone with us watching the proceedings tonight in the House, and that is Jean-Marc Miltenberger. Welcome to the Chamber.

---Applause

Moving on with questions I have Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Just with regard to programs and district operations, I noticed that the budget looks fairly stable, down by $3 million. If you look further down under program delivery details, you see that the Nahendeh district is down, one of those 30 percent of the $3 million that this program is down. Can the Minister give me an explanation as to why that is?

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. For that we’ll go to Minister McLeod. My apologies, we’ll go to Mr. Stewart.

Thank you. I was a little bit concerned whether it was district operations or programs. It sounds like it is more specific of programs there. I am satisfied with that answer.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. I will take it as a comment. Page 5-55, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, programs and district operations, operations expenditure summary. Any questions?

We are moving on to 5-56. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have one question here. It is under the mobile and computer equipment line item. There is $425,000 in 2012-13 and nothing in 2013-14, so what are we not doing? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister McLeod.

Mr. Chair, that is in capital now. That’s why it’s not reflected here.

Whose capital? Maybe the Minister could be a little more specific and tell me where the money is in the budget. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. We’ll go to Mr. Anderson.