This is page numbers 2439 - 2492 of the Hansard for the 19th Assembly, 2nd Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was housing.

Topics

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

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The Chair

The Chair Lesa Semmler

Thank you. Member for Hay River South.

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Rocky Simpson

Rocky Simpson Hay River South

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can the Minister tell me: which communities in the North have housing maintainers in the community, and how many or which ones do not? Thank you, Madam Chair.

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The Chair

The Chair Lesa Semmler

Thank you. Minister.

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Paulie Chinna

Paulie Chinna Sahtu

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm hoping that we have housing maintainers in every single one of our LHOs. I'll hand this over to Mr. Williams for his response. Thank you, Madam Chair.

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The Chair

The Chair Lesa Semmler

Mr. Williams.

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Williams

Thank you, Madam Chair. Certainly, it's in our best interests to have appropriate trades personnel in our LHOs and local housing authorities. As the Minister alluded to, sometimes, recruitment is a challenge. We are stepping up in areas; we're trying to get more exposure to the trades. For example, when the Member talks about innovation, one of the innovative things that we have undertaken is in our contracting process, where we have a line item in the contracts now that the contractor has to provide training opportunities and exposure for trades. That's a starting point. We have to get interest. Every community, every region, there is a demand for tradespeople. I think we have to work with our partners in ECE. A lot of times, I hear the biggest barrier is inability to pass the trade entrance exam, so that's something we have to look at. How do we make it so that we get more people passing the trade entrance exam? I'm confident there are a lot of young people out across the territories that would love to get into a trade and be a journeyman status, a Red Seal status. Again, it's getting that exposure, so we're being innovative in that way.

I don't have the numbers on hand, but I'm pretty certain that we do have a trades housing maintainer presence in all our local housing organizations. There are some that are in the recruitment phase, for sure, like your colleague from Deh Cho mentioned. We are trying to recruit someone for Fort Providence, for example, but it is something in our best interest because the comment that MLA Bonnetrouge made is so true: we are a good training ground. The Housing Corporation could be an excellent training ground to get exposure and get people interested and excited to be a tradesperson, so we are going to continue to step this up. Right now, under our contracting initiative, in the current fiscal year, we have I think 10 apprentices or people who have been exposed to trades on the various contracting opportunities. That's a start. Thank you, Madam Chair.

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The Chair

The Chair Lesa Semmler

Thank you, Mr. Williams. Committee, we are going to take a short break.

---SHORT RECESS

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The Chair

The Chair Lesa Semmler

Committee, we are going to continue on with housing services, with the Member for Great Slave.

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Katrina Nokleby

Katrina Nokleby Great Slave

Thank you, Madam Chair. My colleague for Hay River took a lot of my questions around the maintenance program, et cetera, but maybe, I will just reiterate then, too, that I also hear a lot. I have a lot of housing units in my riding, I believe, and people who are dealing with housing issues and absentee landlord type situations or large REITs, and they tell me that they have issues in their units, there is water damage, there are issues with plumbing, things like that. A lot of times, the response is, "Oh, it's fine. It meets the code. There is no danger," and yet, they say this is a continuing, ongoing issue. My question for the Minister and her department is, and I apologize if I am reiterating Mr. Simpson's questions, but: what measurements are in place to measure how effective or efficient your maintenance program is? Are you looking at things like replacing tanks, or we're seeing fuel consumption going down? How is that metric being looked at or targeted? Thank you, Madam Chair.

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The Chair

The Chair Lesa Semmler

Thank you. Minister.

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Paulie Chinna

Paulie Chinna Sahtu

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to have President Tom Williams respond because we have two different scenarios, whether it be in Yellowknife, and we're looking at the apartments or whether we would be in the smaller communities and then we would look at the maintenance programming. You could just elaborate on the two differences. Thank you, Madam Chair.

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The Chair

The Chair Lesa Semmler

Thank you. Mr. Williams.

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Williams

Thank you, Madam Chair. The mechanisms that we have in place to ensure that we are providing effective maintenance, as the Minister alluded to, there are two different. We have our leased units that we have to rely heavily on the landlord to do the repairs. Our local housing organizations would work directly to report any deficiencies or any repair requirements to the landlord. It is up to them under our agreement with them, our lease with them, to repair it in a timely matter. For our own units the LHOs are all given a budget based on historical costs. They do unit condition ratings on an annual basis, each of our units, so we know the condition of our units and what repairs are required. These repairs would be put into our capital planning process, so it's an ongoing process. We have a good indication of the age and condition of each of our units in our inventory. We know where we have to make major investments.

In the earlier questions, we're always using under the guise of making sure that these units are energy efficient in any retrofits because it's in our best interests. The majority of our budget goes to O and M costs of maintaining these units and keeping them operational. Working with our LHOs this year has been kind of an off year with COVID, but we normally have technical workshops on an annual basis with all the district offices, all the LHOs, so they are well informed. We provide training opportunities to these so they could keep abreast of any changes in their practices. We are always looking for best practices, too, so we are always looking at learning from others. We are not the only housing game in the world, so we reach out and do our jurisdictional research, what are the best practices out there and we follow those. I think it was public works used to have a northern building requirements process. We are tapped into that, and we participate fully in all events to make sure that we are up to speed on building our own capacity and capacity of our tradespeople. Thank you, Madam Chair.

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The Chair

The Chair Lesa Semmler

Thank you, Mr. Williams. Member for Great Slave.

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Katrina Nokleby

Katrina Nokleby Great Slave

Thank you, Madam Chair, for that fulsome response. I'm glad to hear that there is collaboration and jurisdictional scans. I also encourage chatting lots with the association of consulting engineers. I'll get a plug in for them. I think they would be a good ally, and they can do lots of free workshops for your people, as well. They often are in communities doing other work and may have an hour or two and could come in and chat with your people. I do really suggest that as a good partner group. I just wanted to come back to the department had made a comment to my colleague about putting items in the contracts around training and requirements and such. Could the department explain if there are any penalties or, I'm going to use this word again, sanctions for not meeting these targets or these promises in the contracts? Thank you.

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The Chair

The Chair Lesa Semmler

Thank you. Minister.

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Paulie Chinna

Paulie Chinna Sahtu

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll have Mr. Tom Williams respond. Thank you.

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The Chair

The Chair Lesa Semmler

Thank you. President Williams.

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Williams

Thank you, Madam Chair. We have it written into the contract that training opportunities or trade exposure is made available in the contract for every project. As I mentioned, we have over 10 individuals that are participating in that that have been getting exposed to the trades. In regard to penalties, we haven't run into that yet. I think we've been very fortunate that contractors see the benefits of hiring a northern workforce, as well. It helps reduce their overhead costs, having a northern workforce. To date, we haven't received anything back from the contractors. They are helping us move forward with the success of this project. Thank you, Madam Chair.

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The Chair

The Chair Lesa Semmler

Thank you. Member for Great Slave.

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Katrina Nokleby

Katrina Nokleby Great Slave

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do appreciate that. You have such a great opportunity within this department to create learning opportunities. I think, again, I'm sort of probably reiterating what people have said, but I often, in my quest for women in STEM, have talked about "you can't be what you can't see." That is a famous quote from Sally Ride. If you're not bringing in children or kids and youth into some of these builds, you always have to keep the kids out of the construction site as it is anyway, so why not bring them in at that point and show them what the different trades are with the focus on women? More of a comment. Thank you, Madam Chair.

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The Chair

The Chair Lesa Semmler

Thank you. I'll take it as a comment. Are there any further questions under this section? Member for Yellowknife North.

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Rylund Johnson

Rylund Johnson Yellowknife North

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can I get an updated figure of how many units we rent off of private landlords? Thank you.

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The Chair

The Chair Lesa Semmler

Thank you. Minister.

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Paulie Chinna

Paulie Chinna Sahtu

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll get vice president, Mr. Jim Martin, to respond. Thank you.