Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to -- I'm just looking at that document here in the previous number about affordable housing and reduced core housing needs.

Right now, as it is, you know, we already know that the Housing Corporation's been around for a while. It's actually 50 years now. And how housing and HAP houses and public housing ended in 1993 when Ottawa cut back on social housing, and then that was the beginning of the end of a very good program that was talked about for a long time. And I'm not really sure how -- how come 2038, I believe that's when these CMHC's looking to cutting funding off to the Housing Corporation, how -- and how housing's going to be handled. My -- I did ask that question earlier during budget process as we were going through it. So I'm just going to make a couple comments of -- maybe the Premier can help clarify a few questions for me on this one here is that, you know, as we talk about new funding coming from Ottawa to -- to help address the housing needs here in the North, sooner or later we need to ask ourselves as a government, you know, we are at $2.2 billion now -- we are at 1.6 in the debt limit, the borrowing limit -- the maximum is 1.8 billion I believe. We're going to be hitting that wall soon. And, you know, our population is going down. The royalties that are coming up with the mining industry is going down. You know, we're really in a tough situation here in the North in terms of the economy with the diamond mines and some of them are at reclamation stage right now, etcetera.

How do we really trying to address the need of housing overall here in the Northwest Territories? And I know the Premier talked about trust and new relationship, and it's true. You know, the Housing Corporation needs to look at a new vision, a new mandate. Sooner or later, you know, land claims are going to be done. Self-government agreements are going to be done. And, you know, some of these agreements that are already in place have chapters in there for housing and then how they're going to, you know, work with Ottawa or work with the territorial governments to how the money's going to go from this pot to this pot so they could address their own needs, etcetera. If they hadn't said that, though, you know, my concern is that, you know, what happens when we reach that limit in terms of going to Ottawa and saying hey look, you know, we need to increase our debt limit? What happens if they say no? You know, I mean, they may not say no but I'm just saying sooner or later, as a government, we really need to take a look at ourselves within the government here. So I haven't said that. I mean, we may need to really look at, you know -- the days of the Housing Corporation being 50 years old, we may have to go back and restructure that and really look at that piece of pie and how that's going to be carved up, if that's what, you know -- being something that needs to be talked about.

But sooner or later, it's concerning now that -- you know, right now I'll just mention in the budget here for this fiscal year, you know, our budget for just to repair public housing is $3.4 million, and there's $1.7 million for homeownership repairs for 33 communities in the Northwest Territories but yet I still have constituent members calling me and saying that my bathtub is full of -- that sewer's backed up in there again. And again, the policies are there that are hindering, you know, constituent people in our communities from getting homeownership repairs because they don't qualify or if they make too much -- or if they don't make too much. So there's a lot of work that needs to be done in some of areas.

So my concern would be to the Premier is that what happens when we reach that limit with Ottawa and how do we fix these problems? Because I know that it's a big issue but at the same time, you know, I -- I heard new vision, new mandate, but yet the Housing Corporation is 50 years old already. You know, so I just want to get some of your feedback. Thank you.