Thank you, Mr. Speaker, a new seating plan. Mr. Speaker, as I've spoken about before in this House, there is a rental monopoly by Northview in our town, our city of Yellowknife. Going back to the history, this is largely something that was created by the GNWT. In fact, the original founders of Northview were former GNWT civil servants who took advantage of government contracts. In time, as with many of these REITS, they got bought up and became larger and larger to a point where approximately 50 percent, as Northview advertises of the rental space in our town, is owned by one company, and our government gives them over $20 million every single year, most of which does not go out for tender and, in fact, often the leases are renewed without competition. We inherited quite a few of these leases from the federal government at devolution.

Mr. Speaker, the real question is what are we going to do about it. And I want to speak today to some of the solutions and some of the barriers.

Firstly, I believe some of the hesitancy to do something about this is because, under our contractual obligations, we actually have $186 million in leasing obligations going forward in the next couple of years. As we well know, our fiscal situation is tight and to enter into longer term leases will exponentially increase that number. I believe that both departments and the Department of Finance like to keep our leasing to shorter terms to keep that contractual obligation off of our books.

In addition, Mr. Speaker, when building the new government building, or the Tatsaotine Building, it was said that that building would save the GNWT a hundred million dollars over 40 years. This was set out in a general purpose office space review that said it is much cheaper for the GNWT to own their buildings outright as opposed to lease them. I've asked multiple times for that document and for some reason, the Department of Infrastructure will not save it. But I'll take them at its word that it saves us money to own our buildings as opposed to lease them.

However, Mr. Speaker, I believe we need to look at this $20 million with a purpose of divesting it from Northview. I believe we need to approach Indigenous governments and development corps, nonprofits, and local landlords - basically anyone we can - and offer them favorable lease conditions if they are willing to build a new building or purchase one of the existing assets in Yellowknife, Mr. Speaker. I believe if we went to a nonprofit and offered them some of the public housing leases, they would take that money and get more from the federal government.

I will have questions for the Minister of Infrastructure about what we are doing with this $20 million a year of public money.