Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to speak here on housing and the Housing Corporation proposals. I’d like to recognize, first of all, the 2014 NWT Community Survey. These five-year surveys are a huge tool, sort of an evaluation tool, a monitoring tool and I know have played an important role in pointing the Housing Corp towards problem areas. I think the data reflects a job well done in many of our small communities, most of which have shown some significant improvement. That has not been done without big challenges, and I recognize the effort that has been put in to make that achievement.

I also want to recognize right off the bat the response to my and other’s calls for actions in Members’ statements and so on, highlighting the issues of ECE income assistance clients for housing and the need to get the Housing Corp involved in that. They’re the professionals with housing. You know, we’ve been running into so many… I spend way too much and I know others do, too, on constituent issues related to that. So kudos, first of all, and strong encouragement to expand that. I also have clients asking how they can try and get on that list of transferring from ECE income assistance to the Housing Corp. I’d appreciate some information now or outside of the House on how I can advise them to take advantage of that opportunity.

Just looking at utilities, I’m not seeing the savings there yet that I would hope to. I understand the monitoring is starting to produce some opportunities. I’m very excited about the 232 major retrofits. I know there’s always an energy focus in those and I know you’ve done a lot. I think this brings us up to 700. So I would expect to see some savings there now, especially of course with the reductions in heating fuel costs and I’m not seeing that. Were these projections made before the price dropped? Anyway, I did catch Mr. Stewart’s comments and I appreciated that, but I’ll be looking for further information as we go and as time goes by over the next few months.

This is sort of a sweet and sour exercise here. Getting into the sour, there’s 60 percent of the housing issues on affordability are right here in Yellowknife, right under your noses. Whereas we’ve done well in the small communities and the Minister’s introductory comments all about small communities until we got the little few bucks for Yellowknife homelessness as an initiative of the City of Yellowknife, nothing in the Minister’s remarks on this major issue, which I spend a lot of my time on and I know people are in real difficulties out there. I don’t see it addressed or recognized. That’s one thing I’d like to mention. Over 1,000 families is what we’re talking about here in Yellowknife. Greater than 20 percent, and if you throw in other issues then obviously 25 percent of all housing issues in the NWT increased over the five years, we are 45

percent worse today in Yellowknife than five years ago, over 1,000 families. Again, not mentioned.

I’m happy to see the increase in contributions to the homelessness issue and partnering with the City of Yellowknife. I think partnering is always important and working with communities. I was fortunate to be in the Yukon where there was a lot of presentations given on Housing First, and I know the Minister’s staff were there too and enjoyed some good discussions there, although I don’t see the department going for it. It’s being left to Yellowknife, for example. But when you look at where these problems arise, I know the Minister is aware of where our homelessness issues arise, it’s from other communities. So we really need a Housing First Program in other communities where these people are coming from. They’re coming to Yellowknife because there are services here or there are more opportunities to make it without services. So you can’t blame them, but really it would be much healthier, I think, to try and capture the issue with a Housing First approach on a very modest basis. We’re not talking about hundreds here and working with communities to capture that opportunity.

I’m still not seeing much, I know there has probably been some thinking on this, but much action on the way of a system to award Housing clients who show good behaviour in terms of reducing energy consumption and other evidence of efforts to keep costs low. I think that in many cases these are able-bodied people and able people who are unemployed. Often they’re long-term and it seems to me still that this is an opportunity to look into. With smart metres, is that an opportunity? With some work to educate our public. Going to biomass heating. Maybe some insurance issues there, but I’m not convinced we can’t overcome some of those maybe with pellet boilers or whatever or pellet stoves. I’ll leave that one.

I’m still getting major constituent issues with Housing not always related to things I’ve spoken of already, and some of which have only been resolved by going to the courts or the rental officer and making presentations and getting them to turn around the Housing Corp’s direction. That’s unfortunate. It takes a lot of energy, very hard on people. As far as I can tell, it’s mostly to do with communications. A little bit of the issue we’ve had with income support treatment of clients in the past. I don’t know whether it’s an unfortunate culture or what it is, but I think there are some opportunities for some tune-ups there and I am happy to visit with the Minister about those.

Finally, I know there are lots of others, Housing is so important to our programs, but the seniors and assisted living side of things, again, I’m seeing a lot of things happening in small communities, which I’m very glad to see, quite a list of them here. But I’m not seeing the same attention paid to Yellowknife. Although, it’s clear from the statistics that we have a much more rapidly accelerating issue than anywhere else in the Northwest Territories.

So in terms of catching up on the rent debt and so on, debt payments, I think the Minister is well aware of where the issue was on that front. It was moving to ECE and finally getting it back into Housing, which the Minister was instrumental in doing. So I appreciate the improved performance, but I would expect nothing less with the return to common sense on how to collect those rents and so on.

So thank you, Mr. Chair. A bit of a sweet and sour, but I think there are opportunities to do better, as good as many of the efforts have been by the Housing Corporation. Mahsi.