Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate this opportunity. Again, please forgive any overlap. I would like to start by just joining in on this love fest a little bit. I don’t want to be left out. I know the Minister is not used to these words, but all kidding aside, I think this department has really shown some progressive work and move to really tackle the issues. I think there has also been a happy coincidence with the return of housing to its proper home that has helped with collections and so on. I know the Minister fought hard for that under another hat. I think that has been a little bit enabling for some of the collection side of things.
Having said that, housing is a big issue for my constituency, and not just my constituency, for Yellowknife. I don’t want to go into too much detail. I think Ms. Bisaro and others probably have named this, but we have long waiting lists. The turnover is very slow, YWCA and so on. This is a real issue in Yellowknife. Partly, as the Minister knows, I talked a lot about this, income support to access housing doesn’t do it. It simply doesn’t do it. We need public housing. I would ask the Minister to look at that, because I think we can gain for the government. I think the public housing can be more efficient and effective to reduce costs as compared to trying to do it through income support. I have made a number of statements and so on and I know the Minister has access to those.
I thought it might be interesting to get an update on where we are at with the CMHC loan business. I think 2037 is D Day or something, and were there any signs of weakness in the federal government – I expect not – on playing a role in the national housing.
I heard the Minister’s comment on the old, disused units in communities, and I know the communities would probably regard those as liabilities, and given the hazardous materials, I would suspect the
Minister thinks that’s a real liability and something we don’t want out there, knowing how children get into houses and play around and stuff. I guess I would be interested in what the plan is, given the earlier plan has hit a barrier. What is the plan to address that barrier?
The Housing First really is a philosophical approach at providing housing with some obvious approaches that need to be considered and so on under an operational plan. I am wondering if there are any infrastructure considerations or aspects to the Housing First approach.
In terms of solar, I am also very happy to see the solar installations. I just had an assessment done on my house. I have fairly good solar, but not great. Twelve-year simple payback, internal rate of return over 25 years is 7.5 percent per year. When you consider that that’s before taxes, I am getting a $500 benefit per year. I’m not paying tax on that, so it is really more like a $700 benefit, not to mention some of the jobs that go along with that and the environmental gains and so on.
I am looking forward to some of the evaluation, but I just wanted to mention on the Hay River side of things, was that a Housing Corporation installation of 60 kilowatts and was there a miscommunication there? I think it’s clear that with the Net Metering Policy there is a five kilowatt limit, but with our Solar Strategy that ENR has, I believe there is an interest in having commercial providers with larger solar installations, and I see no reason why the Housing Corp couldn’t negotiate with the power provider to provide power there. I would expect that something like that might be worth considering in order to get full benefits from that installation and enable additional work.
I have to also stress the need for seniors housing and particularly, as a Yellowknife MLA, for the Aven’s stuff. I know the department has played a role in that and I know that the corporation is aware that there is an aging in place problem with infrastructure and that there is a potential role again for the corporation to play there. I have heard the Minister say he is very open on that before and confirmed today, so I don’t need to hear all of those remarks repeated, but I wanted to raise that with the urgency that Ms. Bisaro and others underscored earlier. I will leave it at that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.