Thank you, Mr. Chair. Next in line is Health and Social Services. We would like to leave Health and go to the Department of Transportation.

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to Mr. Anderson and to the Minister and staff. I thin

k that’s

great. As long as government allows us to do reserves like that, I think it’s a far better way than doing a lump sum multimillion dollar payout at one time. That’s all I have.

Good to hear that. I know that building definitely needs it. That helps me understand the expense.

The other question I have is the next item in the list and it’s public housing, or PH, public housing, housing replacement reserve. I don’t remember seeing that in other descriptions of expenditures. I wonder if I could get an explanation or is this a normal practice for us to have a reserve situation and what is this referencing in Yellowknife?

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the Minister and Mr. Anderson for the explanation. This identifies it as one unit. Generally, when I see one unit referenced in the Housing Corporation information I think of like a two-bedroom apartment or a house or something. In this building, which is this non-residential building, is it the whole building that’s being upgraded and what’s the size of the building?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to make a general comment and reiterate the comments I made in my opening remarks to the budget itself. In general, we don’t have enough public housing units in the NWT in any of our communities. Particularly here in Yellowknife, we have a huge wait-list for public housing, we have a huge wait-list for assisted living housing and so on. I would encourage the Housing Corporation to seriously consider finding a way to increase the number of units of public housing that we have. I know that we are losing money through the CMHC declining funding, but we need, particularly in Yellowknife, a greater number of units, we need higher numbers of stock.

That’s just a comment. I do have two questions from page 72, the projects in Yellowknife. The first one is it states

: “Non-residential building, 1 unit, major

retrofit.

” I’d like an explanation of why the Housing

Corporation is renovating a non-residential building.

To the Minister: I can appreciate that we’re in a tight fiscal situation; however, $28 million in a 1.6 or 1.7 billion dollar budget is a very small percentage. I know communities are not going to get a doubling of the infrastructure dollars that are shown in this budget, but I think our communities, if we expect them to continue and if we expect our residents to continue getting the municipal services that they need

– dogs, ditches and dumps, as they

say

– if that’s going to continue, we’re going to have

to give them bigger infrastructure dollars. So, I strongly encourage the 18th Assembly to look at the

amount of money that’s going into our communities for capital and to increase it by even 10 percent

would make municipalities happy, I’m sure, and that’s not a heck of a lot of money. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I guess I could have held this question, but if the review has been completed, I have to then ask, when are we going to see an increase in this funding? There’s no projection that I’m aware of to increase infrastructure funding anytime soon.

To the Minister: How long are communities going to have to wait before they get some more capital dollars for their infrastructure? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There is just one section, the infrastructure contributions to communities here in this department and I have to state, I think I stated in my opening remarks to the budget, as well, and I have stated here in this department, that communities have been funded for their capital infrastructure at the same level for far too many years. If I look at the background information that we are provided, the government is proposing to keep communities at the same infrastructure funding level for the next two or three or four years to come. That is a real concern for me.

Our communities, under the New Deal, which started quite a few years ago now, have been taking on more and more infrastructure. They have accepted what used to be government infrastructure and it has now become community infrastructure and as they grow, as communities grow, they build their own infrastructure. Yet, they are funded at the same level for their capital projects as they have been for quite some years. I don’t know how far back it goes but it goes back a long way.

There have been discussions about doing a review. There certainly has been a review done on operational funding and I am very glad for that and there were some changes made, but there needs to be, and there should have been, the same review on capital infrastructure funding for communities. I don’t think that’s finished. I hope that it is in the works. I would ask the Minister to confirm that it is happening. If it is not happening, it certainly had better be one of the first things that are done in the 18th Assembly. It’s

really important that the government recognizes that our communities are doing more and more on less and less and we cannot expect them to be

subsistent. We can’t expect them to protect our residents, to provide services for our residents if we don’t give them the capital dollars to keep their infrastructure up to snuff.

So, it’s just a comment, Mr.

Chair.

I do have a question. Where are we at in terms of a review of the funding? Other than t

hat, that’s all I

have. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don’t need

any more information. By the time I get the information, we’ll be done with the budget. That’s all I have, Mr. Chair. Thanks.