Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to assure the honourable Minister that I would not want to see collective bargaining negotiations take place in this Assembly either. There is a place for those issues. Just to be sure I understand the Minister, Mr. Speaker, do I understand he is saying the issue of indexing the rent formula and utilities charge could be a matter which is properly dealt with in the bargaining process, provided the union agrees?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am quite pleased with the debate and constructive nature of the debate on the changes committed to by the government yesterday in the long-term staff housing strategy. I was pleased to hear the Minister of Personnel say yesterday that he thought the majority of committee recommendations made could be addressed and met by the government. I would like to ask about one area of the motion in which the Minister of Personnel did not comment, and that is the need to index the rental rates and utility charges to reflect differences in climate and costs in the various communities. Could I ask the Minister how he sees that issue being addressed by the government from here on? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, what happened to the humble guy from Fort Resolution who came to the big city to be a Minister without any pretence of putting on airs?

---Laughter

Mr. Speaker, I can tell the Minister and this House that although the Legislative Assembly building society and the Members' Services Board compositions have changed since the signs were erected in front of the construction site, the signs have been changed in one respect only. That is, to obliterate utterly any reference to the Honourable Nellie Cournoyea, who was Minister of Public Works when the project was started. A crew was dispatched to the site, her name was painted over and wiped out, and the Honourable Don Morin's name has been carefully painted in.

---Laughter

Mr. Speaker, my question to the Minister of Public Works is, and I think this would be a good employment project for the Northwest Territories, will the Minister assure this House that he will make a priority to ensure that his deputy minister is instructed to ensure that every sign on every construction site in every community in the Northwest Territories is immediately inspected to ensure that any reference to the Minister's predecessor is obliterated and wiped out?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This being a Friday, I have an important question for the Minister of Public Works. In his capacity as the Minister responsible for overseeing the new Legislative Assembly building, Mr. Speaker, is the Minister aware the signs in front of the new Legislative Assembly building site have been tampered with?

Whereas the committee accepts the fiscal realities and endorses the basic objectives which led to the development of the GNWT long-term staff housing strategy; and whereas the committee is also concerned about certain problems respecting the communication, coordination, timing, inequities and other impacts of the strategy on employee morale; and whereas the committee endorses the following principles as critical to the resolution of these problems and the successful implementation of the strategy:

1. The impact of the strategy should be reduced through a more graduated phasing in of the strategy;

2. In order to achieve equity among all employees regardless of location, the formula for rent calculation and increases, including utility charges, must be improved so as to reduce disparities within and between communities;

3. A working group must be established to study, oversee and recommend solutions on specific implementation problems; Now therefore I move, that the following primary objectives of the GNWT long-term staff housing strategy be accepted by this committee: the encouraging of home ownership and energy conservation among GNWT employees and the withdrawal of the GNWT from the provision of staff housing;

And further, this committee recommends to the executive council that:

1. The GNWT long-term staff housing strategy be phased in over three years;

2. Except in level III communities, rental increases should not amount to more than ten per cent in the first year;

3. A more equitable formula for calculating increases to base rent and utility charges should be devised for subsequent years which will take into account:

a)climatic variations which impact on the cost of utilities;

b)the age and condition of each housing unit;

c)an indexing factor which will take into account variations in the cost of living; and,

d)a corresponding phasing in of the housing allowance.

4. In level III communities, larger rent increases may be instituted in the first year, providing the housing allowance is provided to each employee;

5. The NWT property tax rebate be reinstated at $400 per year.

And further, recommend that a working group be established and chaired by the Minister of Personnel to oversee and advise the Government of the Northwest Territories and report to the next and future sessions of this Assembly on further details and improvements to the implementation of the strategy, including: reasonable additional incentives to encourage home ownership; additional measures and clarifications to encourage the sale of staff housing; means to encourage private sector involvement in the provision of staff housing to government employees; improved coordination with the NWT Housing Corporation access program and integration of staff and public housing administration; technical problems such as metering utilities in multiple units and methods of renegotiating tenancy agreements in a manner which is in accordance with the Residential Tenancies Act. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we have heard very clearly the concerns of Members and I thank my colleagues who have contributed to this debate. I have a number of detailed questions which I would like to put forward so as to give the department notice of the issues which I think are still unanswered. I think the device of written questions will be a good way to deal with those issues. I would now like to introduce a motion, Mr. Chairman. In introducing this motion to the committee I would like to note that I have benefited from advice of the Ordinary Members' Caucus in developing this motion, and I would like to thank the caucus and chairpersons for their assistance.

Mr. Chairman, if I may I would like to move this motion which has been translated and is being distributed. It is a longer motion than usual for committee of the whole, but this is a complicated issue.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do not want to monopolize this, but I just want to assure the Minister that if there are some changes made, if the shock affect is reduced, and I think 25 per cent was a very hard hit in year one in the middle of a recession, if the implementation is staged in a more reasonable manner, if the formula for rents and utilities are adjusted to reflect inequities we know exist in climate and in the cost of living in our communities, if there is some kind of a review or consultation process developed to monitor and get constructive criticism on the issues that will arise in this very complicated manner, if there are some incentives for private home ownership, then the strategy can be successful. I want to be constructive in my comments, but I cannot ignore the many issues and problems which have been brought to my attention and have already forced the government to make major revisions.

Mr. Chairman, before I let other Members speak, I just want to elaborate a bit on the point about encouraging incentives to private home ownership. You know, Mr. Chairman, I think this should be seen as an opportunity for the many employees, and many of them are my constituents who are lucky enough to live in detached units, who actually want to buy their units. I think they should be given strong encouragement. I was very alarmed because one of my constituents has been very anxious to buy his unit and there were some signals given that it would be made easy and it would be encouraged, then he got a letter saying "We will have to look at the government's overall housing requirements before we decide whether we can sell your unit." This was in Iqaluit.

Mr. Chairman, free advice to the Minister, make it easy for those employees who want to buy houses to buy the houses. Take into account the age and depreciated value of those units because this is a quick way to getting to your objective of getting out of staff housing. You could almost give away the units or make the price so reasonable that it will not be greater than the employee's current rent or maybe even a little less than their current rent, and the government will be laughing all the way to the bank. There will be a private market created in the communities. There will be private tradesmen who will be employed or who will create businesses. There will be all kinds of tremendous spin-offs.

Even in Iqaluit, where there is a growing private real estate market, the employees who have approached your department and asked for help are still waiting. They are waiting for the assessment, they are waiting for word on the process and they are getting all kinds of precautions about the government maybe needing your unit after all. If you are making it hard for people in Iqaluit to buy units, then how on earth are you going to do it in the level III communities where the bank will not finance, with all the revenues you are going to get from the sales, or set up a mortgage program? Allow them to purchase on a lease-to-purchase arrangement. Make it easy for those who want to buy, this is a way of achieving your objective.

I am not sure, with the greatest of respect to the bureaucracy, that they have the will to give up these great responsibilities they have for maintenance and repair, et cetera. I am not sure the signal has gotten through to the bureaucracy that the object is to get out of staff housing and you should be encouraging sales. I would like to see a change in the signals which are coming out to those individual employees. I am sure the Minister agrees that they should be encouraged.

If those changes, Mr. Chairman, can be put into affect and we can make some further compromises that will lessen the hit affect and improve employee morale and reduce the danger of turn over, then I think we will make progress with this strategy and you will find you get support from many employees and MLAs you have not enjoyed up to date. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to make it clear that as an MLA and former Minister and also speaking on behalf of my constituents, even the ones who are most concerned about this policy, there is a realization that the government has to move in this direction. Rents have been neglected for many years and in some cases are artificially low, and that it is desirable that employees own their own housing and that the government eventually get out of staff housing. I would also like to acknowledge that the Minister has made a number of changes. There was a time when it seemed as if there was a change to the policy every week and it was very hard to keep up with them. However, the major changes are that the hardship allowance was replaced and its connotation of welfare was removed. It was adjusted so as to be fairer and to better calculate the real income in a household. The policy was delayed in implementation from April 1 to July 1. There has been a delay in the implementation of the water and sewer charges. There have been commitments to energy audits and assessments of the conditions of units, with corresponding adjustments in rents and utility charges. There has been a commitment to sell in level III communities, and other changes I did not mention.

I would like to make some general comments about the problems with this policy which I have seen. First of all, it was very rushed in both the manner in which it was announced and in the time frame for implementation of the move towards market rent. In a recession in communities with the highest cost of living in Canada, to expect people to absorb housing costs of over 100 per cent in a year or even two years is too much. The rapid pace of the implementation also made a staggering reduction of disposable income and caused great concern among the business community, local stores and people who have been able to sell carvings and handicrafts to government employees. I must strongly recommend that to succeed with this policy, it must be slowed down. I want to say that many of my constituents were extremely anxious about this. The manner in which the announcement was made, just before Christmas, made them depressed, anxious and worried, and it has not helped enhance employee morale which I am sure is an object of the Minister of Personnel to ensure employee morale does not plummet.

Mr. Chairman, another major problem has been the formula for calculating rent and utility charges. The strategy sites equity as an aim. Yet, the crude measure of applying a square metre formula based on Yellowknife market rents in unfurnished accommodation when applied helter-skelter to units in communities from Grise Fiord to Sanikiluaq, is simply not fair. People say, "Yes, we acknowledge the Yellowknife market rent is less than the market rent in Grise Fiord, but Grise Fiord does not have supermarkets, highways and a thriving real estate market where employees can have alternatives if they do not want to live in government staff housing."

Mr. Chairman, the same applies to user-pay utilities. How can the government say it is equitable when it applies user-pay equally to communities which have very short daylight hours and extreme cold climates compared to communities which are warmer and further south? The formula for rent calculation and utility calculation has to somehow take into account the differences in climate and the differences in costs. Let us not fool ourselves that people with families are going to get by with 700 kilowatts of power per month. They use much more than that.

Mr. Chairman, the government has indicated in the policy that it is designed to encourage people to obtain their own houses, to own their own houses, to buy government staff houses. The problem is the policy contained nothing but penalties for people who stayed in rental accommodation, and no real incentives for them to get into private home ownership. The household allowance is completely wiped out by this policy. That was traditionally used when it was implemented as an incentive, as a carrot, to people to buy or build their own homes. The government has said, "We subsidize power to the first 700 kilowatts, and there is also a subsidy on water and sewer," which I will acknowledge, although those costs are borne by all the residents of a community. However, Mr. Chairman, there is no subsidy on fuel. The very least the government could do, if it was going to eliminate the household allowance for electricity and water because subsidies are in place, is at least retain it for fuel where there is at present no subsidy in place. If that had been left in place, you would have some incentive for people to take the bold step -- and it is a bold step in many of these remote communities -- of going into home ownership.

I also have to note, Mr. Chairman, that although the Housing Corporation has started a program of home ownership which was announced this fall, it has not been coordinated with the government's new staff housing policy so we are not seeing opportunities for employees to access the Housing Corporation programs if they want to get out of staff housing.

I will give my own constituency as an example with approximately 275 to 300 employees. There are only a handful of detached units. Unfortunately, most of the houses in Iqaluit are multiple units which I do not think we have been shown can easily be bought by an individual. People who want to access the home ownership programs face several problems.

First of all, there are only three units available this year in Iqaluit for home ownership. I think that is because the expensive housing needs assessment which was done, never contemplated the needs of public servants who may want to get into home ownership. At that time, they were not going to be under these pressures to move out. Secondly, as of today, there are only nine lots available if you do want to build. So, there are no opportunities for people to access these programs of the Housing Corporation. In my community, there is virtually no land if they did want to access the programs.

The other problem with this policy, Mr. Chairman, and I am trying to be constructive in my comments, there was very poor, if any, consultation with the people affected and with the employees themselves. Mr. Kakfwi cited the 1979 joint working group between public service unions. People were asking if it worked well in 1979, why were employees not consulted in 1992, if changes were going to be made?

Mr. Chairman, with the greatest of respect to the hard pressed people in Personnel, they need help, they need advice. They have made some very serious mistakes in the way they have put this policy forward. The first mistake was they did not follow their own Residential Tenancies Act in giving notice. The notices which were given out in December were illegal according to the laws of this Legislature, they were not sent by registered mail or they were not personally served. My unilingual constituents, furthermore, for a government who is committed to official languages, were most offended that they did not get notices of these major changes in their lives and in their financial situations in their first language. The notices were given to my Inuit constituents in English.

There have been some serious problems with the manner in which this strategy has been implemented. Information tabled by the Minister of Personnel in this House has presented further problems. In particular, I am going to have some hard questions about the statements made in this Legislature and the documents before us about how tenancy agreements can be modified in order to encourage tenants to sign new agreements. I am advised the method the Minister has cited in these statements is also against the Residential Tenancies Act. Mr. Chairman, what I am saying is there is a need for a method of consultation so this policy can be implemented effectively. So far we have had no real meaningful consultation or, more importantly, a process for consultation. That has to be put in place if this thing is going to work.

I would like to endorse some of the comments made by my colleagues about costs. Mr. Chairman, since the strategy was announced there have been all kinds of commitments made about energy audits. In fact, the energy audits are going to be done by two departments of this government. Assessment of each unit in consultation with employees both for purchase, where they want to buy a unit, and for rental adjustment, if they feel their unit is substandard. Mr. Chairman, the costs of this work and the time required are staggering. I am really impressed the Minister thinks it can be done this spring. I know there are some 500 houses in Baffin alone. I know something about the logistics of travel in the Baffin. I think this is a major cost and major time. I do not think the time estimates are realistic. Mr. Chairman, there are going to be costs to repair these houses, there are going to be costs to meter these houses, there are going to be costs of turnover, and it is $30,000 a pop for a teacher who gets discouraged and decides to leave because of this policy. I do not think these costs have been reflected in the financial impact summary which is before us.

The $3 million additional power subsidy cost required for the employees who will go on residential subsidy has also been recited over a year's basis. Mr. Chairman, what the government has not clarified is the likelihood that this subsidy, because it is going to come out of the revenues of the NWT Power Corporation, will be passed on to rate payers, every power customer will bear this cost. So, this is a cost which I think is going to affect individuals in our communities and companies in our communities.

The strategy is justified as a cost saving measure, Mr. Chairman, but, in fact, there are staggering costs which I do not think have been recited here. I think there are more PYs and more travel than the government has imagined which really should be reported to this House in some manner. In closing, whatever changes are made to this policy, and I hope we will be discussing some changes today, there is going to have to be some flexibility because there will always be special circumstances. The strategy and the department is going to have to show some humanity and some ability to be fair to deal with individual cases. Also, Mr. Chairman, there is going to have to be a process to deal with issues that I know will continue to come up.

I have not mentioned some of the technical problems. I do not know if this committee is the place to deal with them. The government has promised they will look at a way of charging tenants who live in multiple row units, utilities in a fair manner. I am told there is no cost effective way of metering heat in multiple units. I think we need some good answers to these technical questions. How can this be done? I also know the government is hoping the private sector will step in and pick up opportunities to provide housing to employees. I do not think a good job has been done of consulting the private sector. I think questions have yet to be answered about how or whether the government will break into those many long-term leases which are in place. I understand a number are being tendered at this very moment in various communities to meet the pressing staff housing needs which we have at the moment. I do not know what work has been done to ensure that we have or solicit cooperation from the private sector in order to take advantage of these opportunities. There needs to be a mechanism, Mr. Chairman, ongoing to deal with some of these problems.

We have heard the Minister of Housing set up an advisory committee. I believe some kind of a working group needs to be set up that will take some input from the private sector, they know something about housing and construction in the Northwest Territories. The department, with the greatest of respect, does not have all the necessary knowledge and expertise within its ranks to deal with these questions. I think the Minister would be well advised to develop some process for consulting and dealing with these, sometimes technical and sometimes very detailed issues which are coming up, about which I have received no satisfactory answers.

In summary, Mr. Chairman, the timing has to be adjusted and the formula for rent and utility charges have to be adjusted to take into account the great variations in our communities. If we believe in the principle of equity there have to be real and improved incentives to private home ownership. There has to be better coordination with the NWT Housing Corporation's programs, with MACA's land development plans in communities where land is in short supply, and there has to be an ongoing mechanism developed for consultation and for tackling these problems with the people who are affected, not just tenants, but the real estate and construction industry in the Northwest Territories. If changes are made along these lines I think the department has a possibility of making this thing work. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.