I can get more into the report, but I want to just focus on a couple of the issues that some of the students not only at the Yellowknife Campus but at campuses in Smith and Inuvik also had. That’s just paying market rent during the summer. Some of our students find jobs in the

communities that they work in while they’re going to school and they want to continue working in their jobs, or their significant other has a full-time job in the community and would like to stay in that community. One of the concerns that were brought up was the terms of market rent during the summer when school isn’t in.

I’d like to ask the Minister if they’ve changed their policy or are looking at changing their policy for market rents when school is not in session for the summer.

The market rent has been brought to our attention on a couple of occasions from the students and also directly from the MLAs. It was even brought up in this House. I did inform the Board of Governors that this was a concern that was brought to my attention. The Board of Governors came back and so they are looking at these areas as well. They know the pressure they’re on with the market housing. Once we complete our question period today, I will be addressing that again, the status of where we’re at with the market housing today.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m really glad to see some of the progress that is being made but also commend the Board of Governors in terms of reaching out to standing committee and allowing members of standing committee to come to their Board of Governors meetings and bring up some of the concerns that we hear as standing committee and as individual Members of this Assembly.

I’d like to ask the Minister, in terms of a concern that I have with the Inuvik campus and looking at programs being distributed equally across the three campuses, has the Minister met with the Board of Governors and the executive to see how we can distribute these quality education programs across all three campuses in the Northwest Territories?

This is a very fundamental question that has been addressed to me, but we need to address being equally distributing programming into three campuses. My staff and my department are working, again, with the college to make sure that that happens. Not only that but we have been reaching out to the general public, what their real concerns are, and there’s been a lot of feedback on various programming that should be happening in some of the small communities. Beaufort-Delta is one prime example, and also the learning campuses that we have in the communities that we have. We need to expand on that. These are just some of the recommendations that have been brought to our attention and we will be following through with them.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The program was originally designed to help with subsidies for about 150 clients a year. Since the inception of the program, we’ve had 158 clients go through the program. We currently have 68 clients that are still in the program. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. So, if I understood the Minister correctly, that’s 68 or 70 out of a possible 150. That’s unfortunate. I would have hoped that the program would be oversubscribed.

I’d like to ask the Minister, when is the two-year anniversary date of this program and will the Housing Corporation be doing a formal review, a formal evaluation of the program at that time? Thank you.

I’m not sure of the exact date, but we are almost at our two-year anniversary now and we will do an evaluation of the program to see if the program is working as it was intended to. Thank you.

It’s no secret that many people who are renting, struggle to meet the cost of their housing and also meet their daily expenses and maintain any kind of a decent lifestyle. Some people cannot afford to rent their own apartment, their own home. They need to rent a room in a house.

I’d like to know from the Minister, as they do the evaluation of this program that’s gone over the last two years, will they consider expanding the terms of reference to the program to include people who are renting not an apartment but renting a room in a house or renting a room in somebody else’s apartment? Thank you.

That’s something I could commit to the Member that as part of the evaluation we can have a look at that. The program was originally designed to deal with affordability issues, and we’ve seen that in a lot of the market communities. I think their affordability issue was about 86 percent. So, as part of the evaluation, we could look to the issue the Member was raising. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. Yes, affordability in Yellowknife is the major issue in housing and in my community. At this point, I looked at the NWT Housing Corp website. There’s no indication that this program will end.

So I’d like to know from the Minister, it’s been two years, what are the intentions of the Housing Corp? How long will this program continue? Do they intend to continue it and for how long? Thank you.

I don’t think we had a timeline on this. It was a program to help those that are living in market communities that were dealing with an affordability issue. We had originally, I think, budgeted just over $1 million. We’re down to about $900,000 now. I don’t believe we had put a timeline on this. Again, it will be part of the whole evaluation process to see how well the program is working and we’ll take that information as we move forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the legislation is presently written for the Single Use Retail Bag Program, paper bags are treated exactly the same. If you go to a store, a grocery store, you have to pay 25 cents; if you go to a restaurant you have to pay 25 cents. To draw a further comparison, polyethylene bags, plastic bags, are treated the same as recyclable bags.

Can the Minister explain for the House why these bags are all being treated the same, whereas plastic bags are not so good for the environment and biodegradable or compostable bags are good for the environment? So if he can start off by explaining why they’re all being treated the same we can then move forward to the next set of questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The paper bags have their own

downside, but I listened carefully to the Member’s comments and statement and I’ve chatted with the Member about this before and I have met with the department about the need, after five years, to take a look at that particular program to look at revitalizing it and maybe fine tuning it. Thank you.

In the interim… Well, first I should say thank you to the Minister for recognizing that the program needs to be reviewed and updated, where appropriate, of course. In the interim, many good retailers are providing paper bags which are compostable and certainly biodegradable bags which are still meeting our objective, which is getting plastic bags out of the environment.

Is there anything that the Minister can do today or commit to in the near future that we can stop having these retailers have to charge the same 25 cents as if it’s a regular plastic bag that does not break down in the environment? I’m trying to get this down. What can we do today, even though we know the updates may be coming forward someday? Thank you.

I don’t have a definitive response to that question, but I will commit to have further discussions with the department to see what short-term and immediate things could be done if there is in fact a need to do that. Thank you.

Is the Minister in any position to bring to light in this House when this type of update could be considered? Because I have a lot of retailers out there that have spent extra money buying biodegradable bags and they’re paying for it, but they believe in an environment of stewardship. But they’re being penalized by meeting the objectives, which is getting plastic bags out of the environment. So they’re doing their part. They’d like to know when the government will do their part by seeing an update or revision or certainly a discussion on this particular issue. So when could we see something in the near future? Thank you.

We will look at how timely we can be. We are somewhat consumed with the budget session and such, but I will once again commit to the Member that I will be able to get back to him before the end of session with some specific timelines. Thank you.