Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The only comment I want to add maybe is relevant to CARE. I mean the Minister and the department are aware that Regular Members not only want to see the amount maintained but would like to see an increase in CARE, especially as it relates to the ability to support Aging-in-Place and allowing seniors and elders to stay in their home as long as they can.
Maybe consideration even of a senior-specific-type care program, but to the program itself, I mean, if we are identifying that some of the challenges are the uptake and that we are actually not delivering the money as expected, then maybe we have to look at the program itself and the parameters of the program. Maybe after accessing CARE, what is known as CARE Major, the parameters currently, I believe, say that you cannot access it again for 10 years; but if somebody is accessing it, you can almost be assured that that client is someone who would almost have other work that would need to be kind of done. There is a bit of a matching dollar program going on there. I mean the Housing Corporation does not pay for the project in full. The owner has to pay a particular portion of it.
So they themselves might only be able to afford to do so much of a renovation or an addition, or what have you, and then maybe in two, three years, four, five years from then they might be ready to do more. Putting them on hold for 10 maybe would be part of the problem or part of the challenges as to why the pot is not getting accessed as often as it possibly could, because I find it hard to believe that there is not enough clientele out there to access this pot.
So again, having the parameters around the accessibility of this pot reviewed might increase the uptake considerably.
The other aspect was what I suggested or commented on in my opening comments with regard to housing, was that we have to kind of give consideration to what other kind of regulations might be in place or problems that might be in place that don't allow somebody to be eligible for this program, or one that makes it just clearly obvious to them that they have to turn it down. The comment I suggested earlier was, in Yellowknife, the EnerGuide 80 standard that the city has in place, and what that affects.
If I am going to come to the Housing Corporation to get a rather large sum of money to go do a major renovation on my home, either to lower my cost of living because I am going to improve insulation factors or I am expanding for an expanding family or what have you, and it is so significant that now, all of a sudden, I have to fulfill a whole bunch of additional requirements that the city is going to put on me because of EnerGuide 80 standards or whatever other standards might be affected by this, then I am throwing my hands up in the air and, next thing you know, I am not accessing your pot of money anymore.
So I think there is considerable work that has to be put into those efforts to make this pot more accessible. I am just not comfortable with saying this is something that we have to just park and say it is not getting enough uptake. Any time I hear that, that means that there is something internally going on, not necessarily directly to the Housing Corporation. There are other outside factors. In this case, I believe that there are internal and external factors that are causing this pot not to get the right amount of uptake. We have to not wait for studies and what have you; this is something we have got to be responsive to because we know we could get this money out and have direct effects and it will have a positive effect on our goals as a government and as an Assembly as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.