Thank you. I’m just wondering: is that percentage, or that amount, has it gone up over the last few years, or has it been maintaining? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my colleague’s questions about gas. I guess one of the questions that I have to the Minister of Finance is the taxation side of gas.

What percentage of gas prices is the taxation on it?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize a constituent, a strong proponent for agriculture in the Northwest Territories and also the proponent for Polar Eggs, Mr. Kevin Wallington, and I also recognize Wendy Morgan, former Hay River resident and my adopted constituency assistant. I know she’s Jane’s, but she helps me out lots here too. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Your committee has been considering Tabled Document 115-17(5), Northwest Territories Capital Estimates 2015-2016, and would like to report progress. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The follow-up of deferred maintenance, and I think the deferred maintenance was a lot worse, especially when we started this Assembly, but do we still feel that deferred maintenance is a strong issue. Is it an issue that’s actually costing us?

The new buildings we’re doing, like the Minister indicated, as soon as we build a new building we have deferred maintenance, so are we getting the value out of our new buildings that we’re building? Because of the volume of our deferred maintenance, is that life of those buildings getting less and less? Are we seeing that we used to need every 25 years a midlife retrofit but because of deferred maintenance that we have, the load that we currently have, are we seeing that we need that every 20 years? I guess, what kind of impact does that deferred maintenance on the assets that we currently have and the assets that we’re bringing forward today?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My comments for this department, I guess if I can get a little more detail on the deferred maintenance. I know it’s been going down annually, what those numbers are, and do we have any kind of projections on where that’s going? Are we seeing some of those numbers going to be increasing over the next few years, or are we getting rid of some of those assets that actually are probably… I’m thinking we’ve got some older buildings that, actually, if we get rid of some of those older buildings it will drop dramatically, but I know that those numbers have been going down, so that’s a good thing.

The only other question I had was basically how much biomass are we implementing. I know Public Works and Services does most of the implementing of any kind of upgrades to facilities. Some of them might be in the capital budgets from our other departments, but I guess, what is the overall strategy of that biomass review? Are we continuing to add more and more biomass? Are we just about maxed out to the amount of biomass that we’re going to be doing? I guess, what’s the strategy going forward on biomass? I’d like to get an update on that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do have a couple of quick comments. I do appreciate the work that is being done on the solar panels at Whispering Willows.

I guess senior housing has been a big issue recently, and I know it’s going to continue to be a bigger problem with the aging population. Some of the problems that we are seeing are basically the quantity, I guess, the seniors in their own homes in places. I guess we’re having some difficulty in the placement side of it. There’s a gap, it seems to me,

between seniors that have houses that are dilapidated or need major retrofits. Housing has indicated that they’re probably too extreme to be taken on by a seniors program or whatever, so then a senior sells their home and then just basically has to be put on a list to go into social housing, so there’s a gap there between when you sell your personal home and get on to social housing. There’s that gap, that period of time where you’re in limbo. I guess that is a concern and I’m not sure how the department can look at doing that and looking to see if we could do a transition period of six months to a year to allow that gap between when people need to sell their home for whatever reason, whether it’s the need of the house or whether it’s the need of the senior, and when you get on the list. Right now, you can’t apply and get on the list until you sell your house, so you’re basically throwing yourself out to the wolves before you get on the list.

The other thing that we’re seeing with seniors is a lot of them are couples and the fact that there’s a big discrepancy between income requirements for a single and the income requirements for a couple. You would think it would be almost double, but it doesn’t really work out that way. The numbers are probably slanted to the single quite a bit, 75 percent and you only get an additional 25 percent for that second person, so if you have two professionals that are seniors that have a good income, sometimes that’s more difficult to get into that type of stuff.

Other areas that we’re seeing, and it may be just based on demand… Like I said, we have some couples that are seniors that definitely don’t want to be in a… They may not be in a housing requirement but they may be requiring. We need that, kind of, that gap, and some of it may have to do with the public sector. We may need some private investment. I think we need NWT Housing to look at that gap between private sector and public housing, and somewhere in the middle there should be a mixture unit that we can mix the two, and similar to what some of the Yellowknife MLAs have indicated, some of those will require different needs. If we had a unit that would have different types of seniors as well as some of their needs, so then you could also put a nurse or something like that into that facility and that would allow some of those seniors that are aging and require a little bit of assistance to fulfill that kind of need that’s being left in the lurch right now.

That being seniors, I think there are a couple other issues in Hay River that I’ve seen. Obviously, that Disneyland area that we have in the community, I think we have just about eliminated all of the units that are there. There may be one or two that are still operational, but going forward, what is the plan for that area, for adding units into there, maybe multi-family, or are we looking at just leaving that

piece of land vacant for now? If I could get direction on what the department is looking for going forward with that.

One other area that I’m seeing difficulty in is the rating. This is for more single individuals, but you go on a wait-list to get into social housing. I had a fine example of an individual that was working poor and wanted to be in social housing but kept being bumped down the list because he actually had an income and was able to couch surf for a year or two years with family and friends, but had that little bit of support and a little bit of an income, and he actually was being bumped down from people that were coming into the community, didn’t have a job, didn’t, I would say, even try, but they would get a higher rating because they were that much more needed. They needed more stuff from the social housing. I mean, I think some of these are operational, but they are all based on the demand of infrastructure in housing. Those are my opening comments.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Thursday, October 23, 2014, I will move the following motion: Now therefore I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Monfwi, that the following individuals be appointed by the Commissioner of the Northwest Territories to the Human Rights Commission of the Northwest Territories effective November 3, 2014:

Mr. Yacob Adams of Yellowknife, for a term of four years; and

Ms. Gerri Sharpe of Yellowknife, for a term of four years.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As these programs go out, what kind of evaluation have you done? My biggest concern would be actually a funding requirement, if the programs are underfunded.

What evaluations are the department doing as they roll it out for the funding needs of these programs? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.