EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
Over the past two years, the corporation has been able to finally take the steps needed to rebuild its capacity in order to move forward in strengthening its bond with LHOs.
For example, since 2013, the NHC executive team has visited 14 communities, 7 this past summer alone.
In addition, to ensure that contact is made with all LHOs each year, the NHC president is also holding conference calls with LHO boards that were not visited this summer.
The management agreement has existed in some form since before Nunavut was created and has been updated over the years to adjust to changes in the housing landscape.
However, the last time the agreement was updated was in 2006. Therefore, the Nunavut Housing Corporation is in the process of reviewing the agreement to reflect the new environment within which LHOs are now operating.
New technologies, new software, new legal landscapes, changes in accounting standards, increases in scope of other legislation, such as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, and requirements to comply with Government of Nunavut policies, such as the NNI Policy and GN procurement standards, are all examples of how the landscape in which LHOs and NHC operate has changed.
To sort through the implication of all these factors, NHC has established a senior management committee working group, which includes LHO representation, to review and establish the parameters of a new agreement.
This is a major endeavour still in the early stages.
The working group is currently establishing the scope of the project and working to clarify all of the concerns to be addressed in the review.
For example, a major aspect of this initiative is clarifying NHC’s obligations to LHOs, especially where legal and IT services are concerned.
Other elements will lean towards determining how NHC can support the growth of LHO capacity by including LHO staff as part of the corporation’s overall Inuit Employment Plan.
For instance, NHC will work with its partners to develop local capacity by identifying training pathways for LHO staff to further develop trade, financial, management, and leadership skills. NHC is also examining ways to provide opportunities that will enable LHO staff to progress into district and headquarter positions.
The work of this management agreement review will continue through 2016 and I will be glad to provide regular updates on the progress of this initiative to my colleagues.
Mr. Chairman, I look forward to answering any questions you may have.
Does the member who moved this item to Committee of the Whole have comments?
I won’t start with too many points, but I want to speak to some of the issues.
Let me start by thanking the minister.
Good afternoon. I am pleased that you are able to appear here with your officials.
I proposed a motion last spring to review the agreement and to have my colleagues share in this review of the agreement. My reasoning was that we have often heard from the communities that local housing association boards have different interpretations of the language in the document.
Further, Members of the Legislative Assembly have a different understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the housing associations personally.
Mr. Chairman, while on this subject and with Nunavummiut listening to the proceedings, I wanted to discuss this issue so everyone has the same information and to ensure everyone has the same understanding of the connection between the organizations as it is written in the agreement.
This is between the local housing association elected boards as well as the Nunavut Housing Corporation. To ensure that we understand along with Nunavummiut listening to the proceedings, perhaps by discussing it, we can all have the same understanding so that we can work together to move forward. That is our goal.
However, we don’t have the same understanding right now concerning this document. I can say that right off.
Therefore, because of our lack of understanding, we will be submitting our questions on these issues. What seems obvious is that although we may have the same mindset at the beginning, the only way to arrive at a common understanding and to raise new issues to be deliberated on by the committee and members is through debate.
That is all I will comment on for now, Mr. Chairman.
Are there any questions on the opening comments?
Seeing none, I will now open the floor to questions. Mr. Enook.
Mr. Enook (interpretation): Let me start with the questions, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
I’ll start with and base my question on the agreement.
In your September 14, 2015 letter to MLAs, you wrote that the Nunavut Housing Corporation “is in the process of reviewing the existing Master Agreement for the Management and Administration of Local Housing Organization Programs” and that this review “is being done in consultation with LHOs.”
Let me first ask: which LHOs have provided input to you?
I can respond in part to his question, but if I cannot provide a response, either one of my officials can respond.
Mr. Chairman, if I understood the question correctly, I can respond by region, the Baffin, Kitikmeot, or Kivalliq.
The information is distributed to the communities through the district offices.
Perhaps my question is not clear, so I’ll restate it.
Concerning the agreement, during the review by the Nunavut Housing Corporation, which communities have you heard from? Which communities have you involved? Which housing boards have been involved in your review?
Regarding the consultations with local housing offices, which LHOs provided input to NHC concerning this review?
Mr. Chairman, the corporation staff visited the communities and they had met.
I can use as an example the communities that have been visited: Sanikiluaq, Igloolik, Arctic Bay, Pond Inlet, Clyde River, and Qikiqtarjuaq.
Mr. Chairman, for the communities we hadn’t visited, we had teleconference calls with them and they are the communities of Arviat, Gjoa Haven, Whale Cove, and Taloyoak.
We are still working on the communities we haven’t been able to visit and they are the communities of Kimmirut, Naujaat, Kugaaruk, and Chesterfield Inlet.
We have planned to schedule conference calls with these communities.
We are still planning to meet with the other 12 communities and it’s being worked on.
When you visit the communities or talk to them on the telephone, do you do a page-by-page review of this master plan and do you give them an opportunity to let you know how they feel about certain clauses or give suggestions for revisions?
Do you do that with all the communities with this document?
Is that how your consultations are set up?
The people were representing the Nunavut Housing Corporation. They had representatives from the NHC board on the tour of the communities I mentioned in an earlier statement that were visited.
I personally don’t have knowledge of some of the issues and I cannot answer.
Nonetheless, Ms. Kimball was present for the entire tour of the communities and she also had telephone meetings. In order to have your question responded to, I would ask that she be allowed to respond to that question, Mr. Chairman.
One of the things that we have undertaken this past year is I want to get out and have a personal connection with each of the boards and the managers.
With each group that I have met with, my questions have basically been: what is working; what is not working; where do you need support that you’re not getting it; why NHC needs the things we need from the LHOs to help lobby for additional funding; and to explain the bigger picture of what we’re doing to address the housing crisis.
No, we have not been doing a clause-by-clause review as part of those initial consultations. At this point, we’re trying to get a sense on the big picture of what’s working and what’s not.
We have formed a working group. We’re not going to have all 25 LHOs represented on the working group. It is going to be a subset of the LHOs and that group is going to go through and do that detailed clause-by-clause review.
At that point, once we have a first draft, it’s our intention to then work with the whole group of LHOs and circulate it for feedback at that point, but again, we’re at the very early stages of this process.
Once these consultations or talks have taken place, how many boards do you think you will have spoken to?
All the communities’ boards or just some of them? Once consultations are done, will you have spoken to all of them or only some of them?
Hon. George Kuksuk (interpretation): Mr. Chairman, I want to give you a definitive answer and not a guess.
If I understand the question correctly, we have already listed the communities that we have visited already. The communities that we could not visit were consulted by telephone.
As I stated earlier, we still have a number of communities that have not been visited and have not been consulted by telephone.
We still have 12 communities to deal with, so the consultations have not been completed.
Not all the communities in Nunavut have been visited.
We still have 12 more communities to consult either by telephone or by direct visit.
I understand what you just said and it’s perfectly clear to me.
Let me go back to something else. I believe Ms. Kimball stated, if I understood her correctly, that local housing organizations are not involved in the detailed clause-by-clause review of the agreement, but you have stated that you are reviewing it.
Will the communities get an actual opportunity to make amendments or give their input when amendments are being made to the agreement?
Yes, we have no choice but to work with the local housing organizations on the management agreement.
Yes, I understand that. You just said you are going to work with them.
In Nunavut, the municipalities and hamlets are represented by the Nunavut Association of Municipalities. With the Nunavut local housing organization chairs, do they meet annually to discuss issues and ideas and to provide their suggestions for areas that need improvement?
Do they do that as well and, if so, do they meet with the Nunavut Housing Corporation president or the minister during the AGM?
Your question about the chairs, no, we don’t meet with them. We have not set up anything like that.
There is no funding for that purpose.
However, the association’s managers that run the associations have regional meetings in Nunavut.
I don’t understand. Let me ask this.
You stated in English, so I’ll say it in English. I don’t understand association management.
Is it the workers and the clerk, the workers that work for the board?
Is this the actual managers of the housing association? When you say association manager, who do you mean?
Let me get that clarified first before I ask my next question.
I will clarify that for you.
If a housing association manager from a community, let’s say in Pond Inlet, the housing association managers from (interpretation ends) each association (interpretation) have regular meetings, if you can understand me.
Mr. Enook (interpretation): Thank you for explaining that.
Mr. Minister, if I ask you, how would you respond to this? The Nunavut Housing Corporation is always saying that these community boards have a lot of authority and they are the managers.
Would it be appropriate to say that these actual managers and boards should be made to meet annually?
What would you think about that idea?
Your question is asking about the chairs of the local housing organizations. If I understood correctly, you asked if they could be met with.
I can respond by saying that the district offices in the Baffin, Kitikmeot, and Kivalliq handle each region.
Whenever there is a new chair or board elected, our staff from the district offices will go to the communities and work with them.
This is my actual question. I’m not talking about the district offices or the regions. I’m asking for why this would not happen where the local housing boards create something like NAM, an association where they can meet annually, and then they will get together and work on all of the problems, and then they come to you with suggestions on how to make improvements.
What is the problem with creating that?
It is totally understandable to want to know that.
With respect to funds specific to the chairperson meetings of the LHOs, I understood the subject to be meetings with chairpersons of the local associations.
For specific funds like this, if funds are not earmarked for specific budget items, it can be difficult as the LHO manager of the association is responsible for the entire operations. These managers are the ones who meet with the board (interpretation ends) management (interpretation) and this is one avenue for board officials to work with the system.
However, what I am not saying is that this is impossible. Perhaps in the future, we will have to reassess the situation with regard to the question about chairpersons’ annual meetings and whether we can accommodate that. We will have to determine whether funds are available for this type of meeting, but we can at least look into it.
As you will be looking into it, I will have expectations.
We know that finance is always touching things, but I know for a fact when you went to Pond Inlet this summer, you went by charter and you went to other communities by charter as well. Charters are extremely expensive and here we have daily scheduled flights.
For you and your staff for your community visits, if you’re not worried about finances for coming to the communities like chartering and stuff like that, I’m sure you can find the money to have the board chairpersons meeting annually.
If you’re not worried about spending all of that money to go to the communities, I’m sure it can be not worrisome where you set up a way where the chairpersons will have annual meetings.
I am just thankful that this concern will now be taken into consideration by the department.
While on this issue, I have another question regarding this master agreement. As you work towards completing these issues, I believe you stated that you are reviewing the master agreement, if I heard you correctly, at the Nunavut Housing Corporation.
Are you now able to identify what areas will be changed or which areas you anticipate making changes?
Before I answer your question, I would like to make a comment on the chart that you referred to and how we went to the communities.
There were ten housing corporation employees working on the tour and they looked at the options of where it was the cheapest to go visit the communities.
The cheapest way to go was to go by charter, which is cheaper than going on regularly scheduled flights.
It was cheaper by charter. There were ten employees who were going to be visiting the communities and it was going to be a lot more expensive to go on scheduled flights.
We opted to use the charter as we were going to different communities.
I wanted to make that clear.
With your next question, we haven’t completed the review yet. There are 12 communities and LHOs that we have to work with. I’m sure there are going to be some changes, but at this point, I can say that we haven’t completed the review as we have to work with the other communities.
Sometimes it’s quite obvious. I wasn’t going to mention it, but I will have to make a rebuttal.
You stated that it was cheaper if there were ten.
Was it necessary to have ten people going to the communities?
When a flight is chartered by the government, there are usually two or three people working and then there are the people who hopped on for the joy of it.
I don’t know whether those ten were all essential staff.
I don’t know how it was.
My question: the master agreement is being reviewed and once it’s completed and before final approval, would it be sent to the housing organizations for review?
As the Chair, I will remind members to be respectful and maintain decorum during proceedings in Committee of the Whole.
Hon. George Kuksuk (interpretation): The other one was just a comment, but the member wanted to know if the board of directors would look at the amended copy before approval.
I’m confused again, but you mentioned something about decorum in the House.
I don’t know whether or not I can ask questions now.
Mr. Chairman, the Nunavut Housing Corporation’s board of directors will see the proposed new master agreement prior to approval.
What role will the cabinet have, if any, in approving the proposed new Master Agreement for the Management and Administration of Local Housing Organization Programs?
If it is necessary to bring it to cabinet, then we will do so.
Let me ask: what does it mean when you say “if necessary”?
What would be an indicator that it would have to go to cabinet?
Hon. George Kuksuk (interpretation): Thank you very much. I was looking at the time here.
With respect to my response, “If it is necessary to bring it to cabinet,” I will refer it to Ms. Kimball so that she can respond to the question.
I will have to consult with my policy officials and EIA to find out what the criteria is for going to cabinet.
I’m not sure if this agreement in the past has been a cabinet approved document. If it has, then we would definitely bring it back to cabinet. If it hasn’t gone to cabinet previously, I’m not sure if there is a requirement to go to cabinet.
That is a decision above my level.
Ms. Angnakak: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome to you all this afternoon.
We have been talking about the management agreement.
In the letter that the minister wrote in September, the timeline that was provided was the 2016-17 fiscal year, and then a new one would be in place.
I’m wondering if this timeline still stands today.
Yes, that is still our target. We would like to have it developed before the end of 2017.
I would like to ask the minister if he would be willing, as soon as it’s completed, to table it in the House, whenever the next sitting is in the fall.
Yes, definitely. Once it’s completed, I can table it in the House.
Does the current agreement apply to both the local housing associations and authorities?
At present, there are local housing authorities in Cape Dorset, Iqaluit, Baker Lake, Coral Harbour, Kugaaruk, and Taloyoak. Have any local housing authorities in other communities ever requested a change that they want to become an organization instead of an authority?
Hon. George Kuksuk (interpretation): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the member for that question.
We have not seen any other requests to have their titles change.
Is there any local authority or organization that you may be considering changing the status of them? Are there any local housing organizations or authorities that you might be changing the status from an organization to authority or vice versa?
There have been some associations that have changed to authority status.
I have not been informed of an authority being changed to an association, but I would like to refer this question to Ms. Kimball.
We generally don’t pursue flipping from an association to an authority unless there’s an issue with the status of the association.
If the association is incurring issues maintaining its status, then it can have its status revoked, which makes them a non-existent legal entity.
That creates a number of challenges.
They’re no longer able to do payroll and banking.
We have to look at options if they find themselves in that situation.
Our first focus is to try to find a way to resolve the issue maintaining the association.
We do have two that we have some challenges with and we’re working with very closely to try to address that and keep them as an association, but if they were to lose their status, then we’re kind of stuck where we have to do something quickly to be able to keep operating.
Ms. Angnakak: On page 2 of the Nunavut Housing Corporation’s Master Agreement for the Management and Administration of Local Housing Organization Programs, it states that “the corporation’s current Core Need criteria shall be used to determine a household’s level of need for housing assistance” and that “allocation of public housing assistance shall be based on the corporation’s client selection criteria guaranteeing universal and public delivery.”
To what extent are local housing organizations permitted to deviate from the Nunavut Housing Corporation’s criteria when they are allocating public housing units?
I again thank the member for her question.
I will refer the question to Ms. Kimball as she has the documentation in front of her, if it’s okay with you, Mr. Chairman.
The current point rating system allocates up to a maximum of 100 points.
Of those 100 points, right now, there are up to 40 community-specific points that the board can elect to include specific criteria that is set out, whether they choose to include that or not include that.
Outside of the point rating criteria itself, the board also has capacity to set things like residency requirements, whether or not the applicants are eligible to go onto the waitlist, then they go through the point rating system. The point rating is a cabinet approved system, but it does include a number of points that are community-specific, so each board can determine how they want it, which point sets they want to include.
Ms. Angnakak: In circumstances then where a local housing organization wishes to deviate from the Nunavut Housing Corporation’s core need criteria or client selection criteria in making a housing allocation decision, what actions does your organization take when this happens?
I would like to have Ms. Kimball continue with the response.
For special circumstances, the board can propose a deviation from the process. We do ask that that get shared with our district office so that they can review it. That’s more of an audit control standpoint to make sure that there is not favouritism or relationships.
We want to make sure that ultimately the program must remain open, transparent, and fair. We do a review to make sure that the board has documented their rationale and that it’s legitimate rationale. In those cases, we will be okay with making special circumstance requests.
When that happens, how often do you get these kinds of requests to deviate from the plan?
Hon. George Kuksuk (interpretation): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. With respect to her question as to how we use that, again I don’t have the information, so I will ask Ms. Kimball to respond.
I don’t have specific stats with me.
I know we try to discourage it as much as possible because we want to work through the point rating system, again, to make sure it is equitable and fair.
The fundamental problem is that we need 3,000 more housing units and we have a housing stock of 5,100.
There are some really dire circumstances out there, and we have to be very careful every time we make an exception that there isn’t a large number of other people who would fall in that same exception because we don’t have the housing to accommodate everybody. I don’t have a specific number. We try to keep it few and far between.
When we talk about the core need criteria or client selection criteria, how many recommendations have you gotten perhaps over the last 10 years from local housing organizations? How many recommendations for changes to those criteria have you received?
Hon. George Kuksuk (interpretation): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I have no idea how many recommendations have been made in the last 10 years in regard to the selection criteria.
I’m sure Ms. Kimball has that information from her office, so I would refer this question to her.
As we go through and do this review of the management agreement, it may well lead into looking at other deeper pieces.
We know we will want to have a revisit of the point rating system at some point.
We’re not there yet. I’ll leave it at that.
Ms. Angnakak: It seems like there is a lot of work to do when it comes to making the right decisions about public housing units. It’s very complex.
If you did get recommendations before, can you give us an example of perhaps a recommendation that was provided to the Nunavut Housing Corporation in regard to changes to client selection criteria or core need criteria?
Hon. George Kuksuk (interpretation): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. This is continuing from the previous question, so I would like Ms. Kimball to respond.