EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
Mr. Chairman, the Nunavut Housing Corporation’s 2008-09 business plan indicated that “a workshop was held in Rankin Inlet in April 2007 where the managers of all LHOs met with NHC staff to provide input on how to revise the Public Housing Rent Scale.
However, the Nunavut Housing Corporation’s 2009-2010 business plan does not address the public housing rent scale and it is apparent to members that it has not been revised in a number of years.
During the minister’s appearance, members raised the issue of the public housing rent scale and noted the importance of ensuring that its application does not create disincentives to seeking employment.
Members encouraged the Nunavut Housing Corporation to periodically review the rent scale and recommend that the corporation work with the Department of Education, which administers the GN’s Income Support Program, in this area.
The Nunavut Housing Corporation’s 2009-2010 business plan indicates that one of its priorities is to “Strengthen LHO financial management by the NHC” taking over the direct payment of “the non-controllable utility expenses for LHOs and allowing them to dedicate their resources to increased internal financial management on administration, maintenance and collection of rents.
The NHC is working on developing a database to ensure that the Corporation can take over direct payment of non-controllable utility expenses” on behalf of LHOs.
The standing committee looks forward to updates on the success of this initiative.
The Nunavut Housing Corporation’s 2009-2010 business plan indicates that the cost of utilities for the public housing program will increase from $55,909,000 in 2008-09 to $64,055,000 in 2009-2010.
This is a 14.5 percent increase.
The business plan indicates that “Utility expenses include power, fuel, water and sewage, and garbage collection.”
The standing committee encourages the Housing Corporation and the Department of Community and Government Services to work together to explore ways of addressing costs in this area.
The Nunavut Housing Corporation’s 2006-07 annual report indicates that a total of $7,452,000 was spent by the Nunavut Housing Corporation on homeowner programs in 2006-07.
The Nunavut Housing Corporation’s 2009-2010 business plan indicates that its priorities include finalizing “the review of Homeownership policies and guidelines to support NHC Program Officers in the delivery of NHC Homeownership Programs.” Members recognize that the corporation’s budget for homeownership programs is primarily funded through its annual capital estimates.
The Nunavut Housing Corporation’s 2009-2010 business plan indicates that “In March 2009, responsibility for the homelessness file was transferred from the Department of Education to the NHC.
The Corporation is in the process of preparing a framework to establish a Homelessness Secretariat.” $200,000 has been budgeted by the Nunavut Housing Corporation for this function.
The standing committee looks forward to regular updates on the work of this secretariat.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening comments on the 2009-2010 Main Estimates and Business Plan of the Nunavut Housing Corporation. (interpretation) Thank you.
In the minister’s opening comments, he said, “The need for additional public and affordable housing continues to place a burden on the finances of the government and we must seek alternative sources of funding.” Has the Housing Corporation looked into any alternative sources of funding for public housing?
I would like to thank the member for raising that issue; it’s a very important issue for the corporation.
It’s an issue that I have been raising for years as well that the social housing agreement we have with the federal government is declining in funding. As a result, when mortgages come due on our public housing inventory, the funding for those units falls off.
It has created a larger burden on the government as a whole to be able to come up with operations and maintenance dollars for those additional units.
On top of that, if you look at the Nunavut Housing Trust and with this new federal funding that we’re getting, roughly 1,000 more units will be on the ground over the next three years in total.
If you look at the average, it’s a $20,000 a year cost to maintain a public housing unit, that’s a substantial amount of money.
We are in discussions with CMHC to try and find a way to help address that issue.
CMHC does acknowledge that that is going to be a challenge for us as a territory to deal with and we’re in discussions.
I’ll be travelling to an F/P/T meeting this summer and we will be hoping to have that issue on the agenda to talk to the federal minister on.
It also not only affects us but I’ve had two meetings with my other two territorial colleagues in the last six months and they also recognize. We’re working together to try and come up with an alternate source of funding for that.
There have been suggestions that maybe we need to sit down and talk to our Department of Finance and try and come up with a solution to address that.
And that suggestion has also been made at the CMHC level for their minister maybe to talk to the Minister of the Treasury Board to try and come up with alternate solutions.
My question is in light of Mr. Rumbolt’s questioning.
Mr. Chairman, in the minister’s statement, the minister indicated that they are requesting an additional $8,946,000 above the revised main estimates and goes on to state that there is a requirement for extra funding for both capital and operating costs.
They will also be seeking alternative sources of funding.
But given the need to acquire and try to get more money in order to bring affordable housing to Nunavummiut, my understanding, Mr. Chairman, is that we were told there is $11 million to $12 million in rental arrears that need to be collected.
Is the minister making an extra effort to collect some of that money so we can at least do something up here for the delivery of affordable housing to the tenants?
When you look at the overall collections of public housing rental assessments, the corporation, and the member is correct, on our books, our gross receivable is a little over $12 million.
I know this question was raised earlier during this sitting and I had pointed out that a large portion of that has been growing as a doubtful account and I think there’s a little over $10 million of that that accumulated in a doubtful account.
So really, our net receivable amount out there in arrears and tenant damages is a little over $1.8 million.
I would say, to add to that $10 million in doubtful accounts, some of these amounts have been carried over as part of the transfer from the Northwest Territories and the transfer of assets and liabilities, so some of that money in receivables goes back a considerable amount of time.
The hon. minister indicated that a portion or at least some of the little over $12 million may not be collected because of doubtful accounts.
Whatever we do up here in the area of housing, sometimes we have to answer to the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation.
What is the opinion of your counterpart in this $11 million to $12 million receivable? Do they know about this, or do they have any opinions, or is there going to be a setback if you don’t collect that money? What’s the business?
If I understand him correctly, I believe the partner he is referring to is CMHC.
Under the social housing agreement that we have with CMHC, the funds flow regardless of what our receivables are and what the doubtful accounts are. It does not affect any of the funding coming in from CMHC.
But as I mentioned earlier, some of that receivable goes back quite a number of years.
We are in some preliminary discussions with the auditor who is trying to find out a way to identify exactly how to deal with that so that we don’t have to keep carrying it on our books.
I would say a good chunk of that is going to be deemed to be uncollectible but yet, because it’s sitting there, we have to record it financially.
So we are in discussions with the Auditor General’s office, which does our audits, and trying to come up with a way to deal with that.
I think I can explain a little better now knowing that big brother is a nice guy.
I would like to welcome the minister and his officials to the witness table.
And as our colleague Mr. Curley used to say, “Please keep your answers short.”
I am just echoing him.
I have a question to the minister in regard to his opening remarks. It doesn’t say anything about homeownership or accessing your own home, although he did make some comments on additional public and affordable housing.
I think that we should be focusing a little bit more on homeownership so that we can alleviate some of these costs.
I would like to see new homeownership programs and that is the one information that I would like from the minister.
The corporation delivers a number of homeownership programs and also as a former member, another colleague used to indicate that most of those programs fall under the capital budget.
Under the O&M and the capital, the corporation delivers the Nunavut Down Payment Assistance Program, the Material Assistance Program, the Home Renovation Program, the Emergency Repair Program, the Senior Citizens Home Repair Program, the Seniors and Disabled Persons Preventative Maintenance Program, and the Home Energy Efficiency Rebate Program.
Mr. Chairman, I would just add that as of March 31, 2009, the corporation has received 835 applications throughout the territory on all of those different programs.
I know that we’re not dealing with capital but we’re looking at O&M and how we can lower the costs in housing.
When people become eligible for homeownership, it opens up more public housing units for rental.
I therefore urge all of us to look for more solutions that will help alleviate the burden presently faced by potential homeowners.
There is nothing here in regard to this issue and that is why I’m asking questions on it.
As I indicated, the NDAP program and all homeownership programs fall under capital.
The Nunavut Down Payment Assistance Program falls under our capital budget and it was discussed at that time.
I would like to invite the member if he has any suggestions or ideas of new types of programs and I invite all members if they have any suggestions of different types of programs that we could take a look at.
I would say we would look at them but I can’t promise you that they would get put in.
But any suggestions or any help that we can get from any members that they feel may be a good program, we would most definitely welcome those suggestions to be able to take a look at.
The issue of housing is very important to the people of Nunavut and at times, we urge the government to make progress or to improve.
If we’re just going to be talking to Ottawa, we’re not going to be decreasing the O&M costs we pay for our housing.
We have to look at how we can increase the number of homeowners in Nunavut instead of just facing one another.
That’s part of the Nunavut Housing Corporation’s responsibility. We have to look at what we’re doing and how we can achieve it.
What I really want to ask is: is the Nunavut Housing Corporation going to be making any plans this year to increase the number of homeowners?
This is not a capital question.
They’re both capital when we’re talking about homeowners or public housing, so we have to look at how we can decrease the costs.
I do recognize where the member is coming from.
I think overall across the territory and the government, and I’m sure in the past, he will agree, one of the biggest inhibitors to homeownership in the north is cost.
I think that through the government’s commitment over the last ten years and continued commitment by this government to be able to try and increase our numbers of Inuit employed within the government, we have training opportunities to be able to put individuals in a position to be able to have meaningful employment and to be able to get out of that cycle of always being stuck in public housing units because they can’t afford to purchase and maintain their own home.
That’s not just the corporation’s view but it think it’s the whole government approach as far as education and training. As far as the corporation’s views, the programs that we have to facilitate that are the programs that I mentioned earlier.
Homeownership is not frivolous, so we have to look at how we can further support homeowners. We hear cases of people who get leaky oil tanks.
We hear these stories much more frequently and homeowners are worried about possibly having to replace their fuel tanks and the costs involved with it.
When we’re looking at the main estimates, I don’t see much support given to homeowners.
Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Okalik. (interpretation) Just as a reminder, you will be able to ask your questions during the page-by-page review of the Housing Corporation.
We’re on page L-3. (interpretation ends) I would like to ask Minister Tootoo if he wishes to comment on Mr. Okalik’s last comment.
Certainly not I or anyone within the corporation would consider homeownership frivolous. But I’ll say that the corporation continues; they’ve had to promote homeownership throughout the territory and provide general information sessions whenever the program officers go into different communities.
It’s part of their responsibility to identify individuals who may be interested in looking at homeownership and to meet with them to ensure that they’re aware of everything that’s involved so that they make an educated decision of whether they wanted to get into homeownership as well.
Mr. Chairman, I know also and the member is well aware that in the last Assembly, there were a number of improvements to some of our programs, the Senior Citizens Home Repair Program and some of the other programs, where the government and the corporation brought forward changes to the income threshold for individuals to raise them from an old lower amount to I think it’s about $125,000 now as an income threshold. So there have been some changes made to try and address those issues.
As far as some of the things that the member talked about like with the leaky oil tanks, there is an Emergency Repair Program that the corporation does have to be able to assist individuals that run into unfortunate situations like that.
We’re on general comments and I’m asking in regard to his opening comments. They don’t say anything about homeownership support and the reason why I’m asking those questions is because they have been omitted.
I’m sorry I seem to be getting off topic, but I noted that they are missing support for homeowners.
Last year, there was $65 million for O&M for the Nunavut Housing Corporation for fuel and others, but we have heard from the petroleum products minister that we will be using a lot less money for this coming fiscal year.
This $55 million will become $64 million within this year.
Although the price of fuel should have gone down for the next fiscal year, there is a huge increase.
I wonder where the increase came from.
As the member suggested, I’ll keep my answer very brief. It’s not just the fact that we’ve had a number of more units through the Nunavut Housing Trust come online, so it accounts for some of the increase as well.
Yes, I will want to see the contents in the future as to what these will be used for.
There should have been support when the price of fuel went down and I didn’t expect to see a huge increase when the fuel price went down because the fuel price has many impacts as we are aware.
The Minister responsible for the Petroleum Products Division said that we will be saving huge sums of money.
I will want to get detailed information on where the increases were made.
As I indicated in previous responses, a chunk of it is a result of the additional units that have come online as a result of the Northern Housing Trust.
Mr. Chairman, also in there is not only the fuel cost but in the grants and contributions to the local housing organizations that are for utilities, it includes all utilities.
So the cost of power, the cost of fuel, the cost of water and municipal services are also included in there and that accounts for some of the increase as well.
Mr. Okalik (interpretation): Yes, I will want to see a summary of detailed information and this is not a question.
Once we get to the appropriate page, I’ll have more questions.
Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Okalik. (interpretation) That’s understandable.
I have no more names on my list. (interpretation ends) Department Summary.
Total Operations and Maintenance. $128,168,000.
Okay, I have Mr. Aupaluktuq.
I thank the minister and his officials for being here.
Everything discussed affects people’s lives and I would hate to see people or families lose homes due to rental arrears. They get into arrears for various reasons.
I sympathize and have empathy to those with arrears, considering that access to shelter is a fundamental right.
This fundamental right applies to all applying presently or thinking of applying, or currently on the waiting list.
It was stated earlier, but I want to ask formally: approximately how much is currently owed in rental arrears and what support can the Nunavut Housing Corporation provide to local housing organizations with respect to collections?
I roughed out those numbers earlier in a previous question, but I’ll say exactly this time to have it on the record for the member.
Mr. Chairman, the gross receivables, which includes the accounts receivable not only of rental arrears but for tenant damages as well, is $12,142,848.
Out of that, Mr. Chairman, there’s an allowance for doubtful accounts of $10,337,554, leaving us with a net receivable for rental arrears and tenant damages of $1,805,294 as of March 31, 2008.
I thank the minister for responding with that.
Your draft 2009-2010 business plan states that one of the Nunavut Housing Corporation’s priorities is to “Move forward in addressing recommendations resulting from an organizational review of the NHC to determine how best to deliver housing initiatives in Nunavut...”
What did this review determine and what is the status of implementing the recommendations?
I just wanted to make sure I get it right, I don’t want to misinform members.
Mr. Chairman, that operational review and evaluation of the corporation is not completed yet.
The corporation’s staff are meeting with the proponents next week to sit down and go over a draft report, and we’re hoping that we should have a final report by some time in July.
Once we get a final report of the corporation’s review, I could bring it forward to the government and come up with where we go from there.
My question requires a yes or no answer, but if it’s no, you can explain a little further.
Mr. Chairman, in recent years, the GN’s Department of Community and Government Services tabled in the Legislative Assembly annual contracting, procurement and leasing reports that provide detailed information on how the government departments spend their budgets.
However, information concerning the contracting, procurement and leasing activities of Crown corporations and agencies has not been included in these annual reports.
In response to a written question that was asked by an MLA in March of this year, the Nunavut Housing Corporation’s contracting reports for 2006 and 2007 were provided.
Will you commit to having the Nunavut Housing Corporation prepare and table separate annual reports that provide similar information on its contracting, procurement and leasing activities or provide this information to the Department of Community and Government Services for inclusion in its annual report?
Hon. Hunter Tootoo: Yes/no… I’m just...
There were two questions there.
Mr. Chairman, as the member quite correctly pointed out that the corporation was asked to provide that information, those reports are done on an annual basis by the corporation. That request was made for a copy of that report and it was provided to the member as a response to a written question.
If the members wish to have that in the format that was provided to the member, provided on an annual basis, I can look into it.
I don’t have a problem with that as the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation.
But for anything that gets provided out to the public, I would have to seek concurrence of cabinet for that and I don’t anticipate that that would be an issue.
My only concern with that is if the members felt that the format that was provided to the member in the written question was sufficient and provides all of the information, and then that’s something that can be very easily done.
If I was to go into a type of format that the Department of Community and Government Services does for the entire GN contracts and leasing reports that they provide, there’s a lot more work involved in that and having a very nice bound document with all kinds of charts and things like that in there.
So if the members have a look at the report that we provided in response to a written question and if that will suffice their requirements, I don’t anticipate it would a problem to be able to do that on a regular basis.
That’s the longest yes I have ever heard.
I’m assuming his answer is yes.
The Nunavut Housing Corporation’s draft 2009-2010 business plan indicates that one of its priorities is to “Establish the Homelessness Secretariat.”
Approximately how many people in Nunavut are classified as being homeless?
The member asked a very good question.
Again, without the resources to be able to pull out that kind of information, I can’t provide the member with an answer to that.
But I know that there are probably 15 to 20 people utilizing the shelter here in Iqaluit.
One of the issues around homelessness in the north here is that it’s not true homelessness; it’s what is called hidden homelessness and it manifests itself in the state of overcrowding throughout the territory.
I think that’s one of the reasons we want to get this needs survey done, to be able to help us identify very clearly and accurately what those numbers are. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank you for that answer.
The Nunavut Housing Corporation is budgeting $200,000 for the Homelessness Secretariat.
How will these funds be used?
That $200,000 has been in the budget for a number of years now and that funding goes to directly fund the shelters.
So will the Homelessness Secretariat be comprised of different Government of Nunavut departments? How will that secretariat be set up? Is it just $200,000 going to homeless shelters, or will there actually be a person or a committee set up?
Currently, I have asked my staff to discuss the issue of different options and how we can come up with something to better address that issue as far as homelessness, and the secretariat to bring different options forward for us to consider.
At this time, there has not been anything that has come forward.
I also anticipate being able to utilize some of the information that’s going to be done over the summer as far as the whole report card progress to be able to see if there are any specific issues in there that this is something that needs to be addressed.
I wouldn’t want to say we’re going to do this and then find out everyone says that they don’t have an issue with this, but preliminary discussions are underway now to be able to incorporate the views and concerns of Nunavummiut.
This is something that formerly fell in the Department of Education, so it’s in the midst of transfer over to the Housing Corporation.
We looking to try and come up with different options of ways to move forward but nothing has been finalized there yet.
I just want to continue my line of questioning.
In your business plan on page L-19, it explains the different types of homeownership programs.
We have heard that the fuel tanks are not included in the support for homeowners.
If either one breaks, they could get assistance through the Emergency Repair Program and the limit is $15,000.
We have also heard that it costs more than $60,000 to clean up the environment if there was a leak in the fuel tank and this fund is not sufficient enough to pay for it all.
I was wondering if you can consider providing some form of assistance to prevent fuel tanks from leaking because we don’t want to see any fuel leakage into our environment.