Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple of points I want to relay to the Minister. I do appreciate the need and the foresight to look at the seniors needs in Fort Good Hope. The Minister has responded by putting a seniors unit there for the people. I understand from the elders in Fort Good Hope that they appreciate they’re going to get a seniors duplex. They’re looking forward to working with the Housing Corporation.

I do want to say, in the seniors duplex, if there is a possibility of looking at an alternative to the heating facility, I know you have a solar panel in the numbers here, Madam Chair. I am looking at alternatives like biomass or wood pellets.

I was in Norman Wells over the last month and there was an agent in Norman Wells that has the bins, the wood pellets, wood pellet boilers and smaller units for facilities such as this one for residential home units. That’s something I want to ask the Minister about. Not being aware why the Housing Corp is going with the solar system, it may have its valid points, but I just wanted to ask about wood pellet units. That might be useful and more of an advantage for the people and support the local economy in the Sahtu. I wanted to raise that, Madam Chair.

I am also very pleased that the people in Colville Lake, I believe when the Minister was there, spoke about a unit for the seniors or having a seniors place there. I know there’s a discussion going on with the department right now. It was a good surprise when the Minister said they were looking at Colville Lake. That means the Minister is responding to some of the requests from Colville Lake. They are looking at this duplex to help them out. Usually you don’t have any type of rental units in Colville Lake. I want to tell the Minister that the people in Colville Lake are quite happy.

The last point I want to raise, while I have the time, is the issue of affordable housing. It’s critical to us in our smaller communities. I see the Minister has committed to $875,000 in the budget. That might be construction up to five units. In small communities, we need this type of support for critical staff in our small communities. That’s been a big issue of

having qualified staff, either nurses, social workers, educators or one of the land corporations or one of the municipal council governments. They need to have these essential people in our communities. I’m not sure how we are going to do the selection of which communities are going to be chosen. I don’t know what the ratings are going to be, drawing straws or criteria as to which region is going to be looked at as having the most pressing needs. I am going to throw in my pitch for the Sahtu for one of the communities. That would be appreciated. I am reminded of a staff person in Norman Wells that has taken on the job within our government but finds it very difficult to have a house in Norman Wells. I can also say that for all the other communities. I thank the Minister for responding to that new initiative for critical staff members in our communities.

Last, Madam Chair, I also want to make a pitch for the Homelessness Assistance Fund. The Minister has committed some money for this in our communities, the hard to house clientele. This initiative shows there’s going to be some movement in our small, remote, rural communities. This money will go to renovating some houses to support this initiative in our communities. I want to ask, again, that one of the communities that I visited and I was quite shocked to see that a lot of people were living in tents, in makeshift warehouses and some of them in pretty bad shape. For whatever reason, some families were in there with young children without any type of electricity, fuel or sewer. These kids were being sent to school. I don’t want to go into how they got themselves into that situation. It was dire straits for them. So there are some people who are homeless in the small communities. A lot of them are still going house to house. Some of them are being put out into situations where they have to go into a neighbour’s warehouse or in a tent. Those ones are very difficult to work with because they seem to have other issues that they need to deal with and they aren’t dealing with them. So what do we do? They’re homeless and not going anywhere. The alternative is you see them coming to places like Yellowknife, you see them in the city of Yellowknife and they’re not doing too well in Yellowknife either. It’s really a difficult situation for MLAs to say how we help them. How do we really help them? How do we help the communities? We see a lot of them also in Yellowknife and when they go back home, they’re okay. So I guess it must be a never ending issue or problem for us as MLAs from the small communities, and the MLAs from larger centres that have attracted the people from the small communities to live here. So I’m hoping that one of the initiatives for the homelessness initiative would be looked at in the Sahtu and possibly one of the communities. Again, I’m not sure of the criteria;

however, I’m going to make a pitch for the Sahtu to be considered as one of them to look at.

So, overall, I want to thank the Minister. I understand that the money from Ottawa is slowly being turned off and then we’re opening up other internal funding to meet the needs of the people in the North, and the Minister is dealing with it the best he can with the resources they have, and at the same time follow through on our vision for the North and the funding that we get. So I’m fairly pleased with what I see in front of me and I have no major issues with Housing at this point. Thank you.