Thank you, Madam Chair. In response to Mr. Yakeleya’s concerns, the core need is something we use to determine where some of our allocations are. If you look at the numbers in core need, that includes all households in the community, not just the public housing portfolio in the community. So we have some challenges there. One of the questions they ask people is, do you think you’re housing is adequate, and nine times out of tent people will say no. Every one of us in here can think of something that we need done in our house, so I’m not sure if it’s a true indicator. I suppose the only way to get a true indication is to hire building inspector and go unit to unit. Then that would be an awfully costly venture. We use these numbers to help with some of our determinations.

On the Fort Good Hope issue, we are looking forward to having a contract awarded. I’m not sure if it has been awarded yet. We are looking forward to having construction started on that. When you talk about the materials in the communities, it’s a challenge we face with the low water levels. A lot of the M and I work we have planned for next year, we are trying to get the material in this year on the winter road so the work can begin right away.

As far as extra material goes, we have given that some consideration. We know it’s a challenge in remote communities. It’s something we are looking at. We just have to be sure that we don’t have people opening up charge accounts and come and charge a bunch of material and not pay for it. It is something that is on our radar and we’re looking at dealing with that.

We have a number of programs designed for seniors. You talked about the land tenure, Mr. Yakeleya. One of the things we think the community can help us with is the land tenure. It’s a lot easier on their applications when they do have land tenure and it was one of the requirements we had. The only program where we don’t require land tenure is in our SAFE program, the emergency repair program because it’s an emergency so we’re not going to be too concerned about that at that time. A lot of the programs are going to our co-pay and we actually have people who have their water pump replaced, for example. They’ve come up with $200 as part of the co-pay. We find that that’s working well. We’re looking at expanding on that.

Mr. Moses’ comments we appreciate on the relationship we’ve had with committee. We try to seek committee’s input and advice on some of the initiatives we have. We find with that political support, it’s a lot easier to move some of our initiatives forward instead of just coming to you and saying this is what we’re doing, end of story. We found that it has really been helpful in advancing some of our initiatives because, after all, they are 17th Legislative Assembly initiatives.

The 100 units that we’re doing over three years, I think we’re in year two and there are 36 being done this year. We’ve been very fortunate. We’ve had an investment of $21 million from the 17th Legislative Assembly to help deal with this. That program is being

rolled out.

Again, we appreciate the comments commending the work the folks on the front line are doing. It’s going a long way to advancing some of our initiatives.

Ms. Bisaro’s comments, we are pleased to hear the Member is pleased with the additional investment in homelessness. I will have Mr. Stewart speak to that later, as well as the cross-departmental work we’re doing.

The $150,000, we think, is going to be a worthwhile initiative once we get all the information from the report and how they can best implement some of the recommendations.

Rent revenue has gone up. Again, as I mentioned to Mr. Dolynny in our exchange before, a shout out has to go to our LHOs and the clients for honouring the commitments that they’ve made and they are actually paying the rent. As I said before, it helps us in our ability to look after the units and look after some of the declining CMHC funding.

The move to move money from ECE to Housing, again, I’ll get Mr. Stewart touch on that later. Public housing stock in Yellowknife is a concern that the Member has raised the last number of years. We hear it. One of the ways we tried to deal with that is through the territorial rent supplement and we’re fortunate that in the capital, we have a number of organizations in the community that take a lot of these initiatives on their own. We contribute to some of the initiatives they’ve taken on to provide additional housing spaces for folks in Yellowknife, through the Betty House, for example. I think Rockhill Apartments is one we make contributions to. It makes it a lot easier when you have an organization to work with and I touched on it before in my exchange with Mr. Menicoche from Nahendeh. We have this pilot program we have been wanting to bring out into the communities. We’ve had two communities who have taken us up on it. We are still engaging with two more. It’s an opportunity for organizations in the community where for $100,000 we will renovate an existing unit and the new will pay them $70,000 a year for five years. That can create a couple of positions with in that community. It’s going to be exactly what we wanted to do. It’s going to be a place for people to go stay or sleep that don’t have a roof over their heads. You know, we can have communities step up, like a lot of organizations do in the capital, then make it a lot easier to roll that initiative out.

Monitoring utilities, I’ll have Mr. Stewart touch on that. The CMHC declining funding, I’m going to just clarify some of the numbers here, Ms. Bisaro. The $1.8 million per year is money that we are getting from the federal government and we’re matching it, $1.8 million each year, so that gives us $3.6 million a year times five years, that’s where we got the $18 million investment from. I apologize if I didn’t make it clear in my communication. So that’s the $18 million. I would like to point out that we’re one of the only jurisdictions in the country that matches the money we get from Canada. We had the Northern Housing Trust a few years ago. I think it was a $58 million investment from Canada. The Northwest Territories government matched that $58 million, so we had $116 million that we put towards units on the ground, so that was a worthwhile investment. We’ve converted a number of those units to public housing because they originally went down as HELP units and we’ve converted them to public housing because we didn’t have the clientele we thought we were going to get, so they’ve served their purpose.

The declining CMHC funding is one that’s on our radar. I recently had a meeting with the new federal Minister of Housing and the new president of Canada Housing

Mortgage Corporation and I did relay our concern on to them that we are concerned with the declining CMHC funding. Member Bisaro is absolutely correct, the money would just get harder to sustain as our money comes in from CMHC. As that number goes down, it’s going to be harder and harder for this government to sustain. I think this year we got $23 million, I’ve seen the figures somewhere. We got $22 million from CMHC and that number is going to go down. We’re fortunate this year it didn’t go down too much, but through the life of the 17th Assembly I think it’s gone down $2.1 million.

The 18th Assembly it’ll go down an additional $1.3 million during the life of that

Assembly, so we’re taking steps to try to deal with that but it is on the radar.

A lot of the larger jurisdictions down south are starting to feel it now. We felt it right away because we depend a lot on that money. They’re starting to feel it now, so the pressure is starting to ramp up on the federal government. So we continue to have those discussions with them. I was very encouraged that CMHC has a new president and there is a new Minister of Housing and I made them aware of some of the issues that we’re facing, so we’re hoping to have those ongoing discussions.

I’m going to turn it over now, Madam Chair, to Mr. Stewart. He’s going to touch on a couple of the other issues that Ms. Bisaro had raised. Thank you very much.