The motion is carried. Sorry. Committee, upon review, one Member was not in her seat. As a result of process, this is now a tie. The Chair will vote to the motion and, as usual, to continue the spirit and prolong discussion and debate, the Chair will vote in favour of the motion. The motion is carried.

Committee, this concludes our deliberations today with the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment. I would like to thank Ms. Magrum and Mr. Vician for your time today. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort our witnesses out of the Chamber.

Committee members, I would direct your attention to the NWT Housing Corporation. With that, I will be asking the Minister of the NWT Housing Corporation, Minister McLeod, do you have any opening comments?

I do, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to present the 2013-14 Main Estimates for the NWT Housing Corporation. The main estimates propose a budget of $112.782 million, a decrease of 0.4 percent from the 2012-13 Main Estimates. The budget includes a contribution of $67.492 million from the GNWT for 2013-14.

As Members are aware, one of the five priorities identified by the 17th Legislative Assembly was to

address housing needs. Housing is a complex issue in many of our communities. There are significant differences in housing needs and challenges between our market and non-market communities, and there are needs along the entire housing continuum from homelessness to home ownership. Our approach to housing should strengthen self-reliance and support residents in meeting their own shelter needs, but also needs to recognize the importance of housing in supporting community sustainability, contributing to efforts to reduce poverty, and reflect the linkages between housing and education and health issues. These challenges need to be addressed in the context of declining federal funding for operating and

maintaining social housing in the Northwest Territories.

The actions of the NWT Housing Corporation are being guided by Building for the Future, our strategic plan, and the priorities of the 17th Legislative Assembly.

Public housing continues to be the largest program offered by the NWTHC with approximately 2,400 units and planned expenditures of $45 million in 2013-14. A number of actions are being undertaken to improve public housing. The new rent scale was implemented on July 1, 2012, and made rent simpler, more predictable and fair.

This new rent scale also addressed the disincentive to work that has been a long-standing concern.

We have improved management of the Public Housing Program with the introduction of new information management systems, increased emphasis on support for the LHOs and continued investment to improve the quality of our public housing stock.

In 2013-14, over $14 million will be spent to improve the quality of our public housing stock. This will include eight public housing replacements, 171 major retrofits, and a variety of minor maintenance and improvement projects. These investments build on the $141 million we have invested in the public housing stock over the past six years.

The 2013-14 budget also contains a $540,000 forced-growth investment to offset the increased utility costs related to public housing. While some success has been achieved on the consumption side with the energy investments and investments in upgraded stock, these don’t completely offset the rising prices for utilities. An additional $700,000 has also been identified to continue the energy investments on public housing during 2013-14, with the focus on installing wood pellet boilers that will impact about 50 units.

The NWTHC has also taken significant steps to support home ownership in the Northwest Territories. The NWTHC will spend approximately $9.5 million in 2013-14 supporting home ownership and providing support to homeowners completing repairs to their houses. We have introduced SAFE, a new emergency repair program, and made changes to our CARE preventative maintenance program for low-income homeowners. In 2013-14, changes will be made to PATH, our subsidy to support the home purchases, which will make this program more effective in supporting home ownership in non-market communities and expand the potential pool of clients.

Late in 2012-13, steps were taken to provide home ownership clients that have a mortgage with the NWTHC revised mortgage balances and affordable repayment options. Letters were sent to clients in December and community visits are underway now

to review the new loan agreements. The steps we have taken as part of this initiative provides these homeowners with a fresh start on their mortgages and provides clients stable, affordable monthly mortgage payments.

In addition to the public housing rental program, during 2013-14 the NWTHC will spend about $6.2 million supporting other rental housing. This spending includes administration and maintenance associated with 118 market rents, 265 households operating under our HELP and supported lease programs and 463 homes operated by third-party community-based organizations. It also includes funding for the Transitional Rent Supplement Program which provides support to reduce the affordability problems and core need among residents in market rentals.

In 2013-14 the Housing for Staff program will be reintroduced. This program provides a subsidy to developers to develop rental housing in small NWT communities where recruitment has been particularly challenging. Changes are being introduced to the program to increase its effectiveness. To further support housing for critical staff that deliver services in smaller communities, the NWTHC has also taken steps to standardize rental rates in our own market rental units and to ensure that all available affordable housing units are used whenever possible. We will work closely with departments and agencies to improve awareness of rental opportunities and the new rental rates. We will also look for opportunities to expand our stock of rental units in communities where there is the greatest need for housing for critical staff.

In relation to homelessness, the NWTHC administers the Homelessness Assistance Fund and the Small Community Homelessness Fund. The $325,000 for these two funds provides support and direct assistance to residents who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, and funds projects in smaller NWT communities that address issues related to homelessness in these communities.

On the revenue side, and as was noted previously, our efforts to address housing needs are further challenged by the declining federal funding for operating social housing. As Members know, the GNWT will see reduced annual funding of $2.1 million over the life of this Assembly as part of the ongoing declines that will see federal funding for operating social housing eliminated by 2037-38. For these main estimates, an investment of just over $1 million was made by the GNWT to offset the federal decline in 2013-14.

That concludes my opening remarks. At this time I would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Do you have any witnesses you would like to bring into the Chamber today?

I do, Mr. Chair.

Does committee agree?

Thank you very much. If I could get the Sergeant-at-Arms to escort the witnesses into the Chamber. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Minister McLeod, do you have any witnesses you would like to bring into the Chamber today?

I do, Mr. Chair.

Does committee agree?

Can I get the Sergeant-at-Arms to escort the witnesses into the Chamber. Thank you.

Minister McLeod, would you like to introduce your guests to the Chamber, please?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To my right I have Mr. David Stewart, president of Northwest Territories Housing Corporation. To my left I have Mr. Jeff Anderson, vice-president of financial and infrastructure services with the NWT Housing Corporation.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Mr. Stewart, Mr. Anderson, welcome back to the House. We are going to move on to general comments. Again, protocol. We will just go through the general comments in sequence and will allow the Minister to have an opportunity for reply at the end here. General comments of NWT Housing Corporation. I am hearing detail. Thank you, committee.

Page 5-43, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, financial summary, information. Are there any questions?

Page 5-45, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, corporate summary, operations expenditure summary. Are there any questions? Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a general question. It is referenced in the Minister’s opening remarks, the declining CMHC funding. The Minister and Members are well aware that this money is going down. Every year we’re having to put more and more of our own money into housing in order to maintain our stock, and continue to operate and maintain it.

I appreciate that the corporation has done a number of things in the last year to two years to try and bring costs down, to try and maintain as much stock as we have without it costing us too much more money. But I have yet to get from the Minister, from the corporation, a plan that will outline to me or make me feel comfortable that we know where we’re going as this money declines and should this money completely end in 2038.

I appreciate that the Minister is working very hard, along with other Ministers for Housing across the country, to try and get the federal government to reinstate some kind of a program, but I still think we need a contingency. We need a plan should, within the next year or so, we discover that no, the money is not going to be forthcoming. We cannot continue to every year add another million dollars to the Housing Corporation’s budget without seriously having some plan in place that people can look at and say, okay, fine, we are doing this this year and we’re doing that next year.

Where is the corporation at, relative to a concrete plan, long term, say a 10-year plan to deal with the declining CMHC funding? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister McLeod.

Mr. Chair, the Member is correct; we are concerned with declining CMHC funding. We have made some adjustments to try to control our costs so we don’t have to keep coming back to the Assembly every year for funds to offset our losses. We did make our case to the federal Minister when we were down in Ottawa. We are planning on having an FTP quite soon, because we are the co-chairs this year. I know our other jurisdictional partners are also concerned with this because it affects them a lot more than it’s affecting us.

I believe we have briefed committee at least once or twice on what our plans are going forward. We would be more than willing to sit down with committee again and give them a concrete plan. We have a plan going forward. We look forward to sitting with committee again, and reviewing that plan and getting their input. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, thanks to the Minister for the response. I do appreciate it. I think other Members also appreciate the information we have gotten from the corporation. We have had updates quite regularly and that has been very helpful.

I guess my thinking of a plan is the Minister said in his remarks that this budget has a million dollars in it to offset declining CMHC funding for 2013-14. What I would like to see as opposed to the initiatives that the corporation has planned, because I know that they are there, I would like to see the dollars that are associated with these initiatives that will say to me, we’re putting in a

million dollars in 2013-14 but we’re going to do X, Y and Z, so it’s only going to be $500,000 by the time we get to, say, 2018. I don’t think that is there and if it is, my apologies to the Minister, but that’s the kind of plan that I’m looking for, specifics and dollars and cents in it.

Mr. Chair, maybe it was a slip on our part, because I know we were providing committee with an update on what we had planned to do, but the Member is correct; there were really no numbers attached to that. I can commit to the Member and Regular Members that we will put this information together. We will put some dollar figures to it, and then we’ll sit down with committee and they’ll have a better idea of exactly what we do plan on doing and how much, at the end of the day, that we’re thinking is going to save us.

I know we have sat with committee and said we are trying to reduce our public housing stock because of the maintenance dollars, but we never attached any dollar figures to it. So we will do some work on that and, at their earliest convenience, we will sit with committee and give them an update on the numbers. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, I appreciate the commitment from the Minister and I look forward to that information. That’s all I have. Thanks.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I noticed the mortgage principal and interest amounts going down steadily over the years. Maybe I can just get an explanation. If these are what we are carrying, is this related? Like, these are under other expenses so it doesn’t seem to be the grants and contributions aspect. Maybe I can get an explanation of that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. For that answer we’ll go to Mr. Anderson.