EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
We have to start realizing that young people who are in need are the ones that can't really help themselves.
I know there are 75 people who are waiting for public housing in Kugluktuk.
We know we have to try very hard to help our young people.
That's a short comment I wanted to make and to help you realize that our young people are important, therefore, we should support them in any way we can.
Mr. Chairman, I don't have a lot to say here and I hope that my comments aren't taken the wrong way by the minister and her department.
I guess I would say that my response to the delivery of the budget address and finding out the budget allocations for housing again, to see for the second year in a row a decrease and this year it's not just a 60 thousand dollar decrease in housing and funding for the capital, it's 5 million dollars.
It really disappoints me, you know, as we've all said that housing is one of the top two priorities of this government and for two years in row to see a decrease in funding, I just, myself I don't think it's acceptable.
I know that and I'm sure that the minister and her staff tried as best they could to try and secure more funding, so that's a comment that hopefully she can take back and share with her Cabinet colleagues.
I know that as a member of the Housing Task Force and a past employee of the Housing Corporation, I won't profess to be an expert at it but have a little bit of a background in this area.
The task force, one of its recommendations, I believe it's Recommendation 9, pointed out the fact that there's a need in housing dollars that were there, you know with the big prior to last year with the emphasis on homeownership.
We're not putting those dollars, not putting our housing dollars where they are most needed.
And where they are most needed is Mr. Chairman, in social housing.
I think that is quite clear.
It's pointed out in the department’s business plan.
There's a critical shortage, you know, we have within the government, we need to build quite a few just to get caught up with how far behind we are now.
We're so far behind we think we're ahead almost.
I think that only now after saying that last year and that being one of the recommendations of the task force, you know, the focus should be on social housing.
Seeing an emphasis for one year only on public housing and now to see more of an emphasis as we've heard you know, in the last little while, more of an emphasis is being put on homeownership.
That really concerns me and I'm just amazed that just by building a hundred units all of a sudden we no longer need to make the main emphasis of housing on social housing.
I am really very disappointed and discouraged to see these numbers in that area for social housing to see the numbers of social housing units being cut in half this year.
It's very discouraging, I'm sure it's discouraging for me it's discouraging for all the individuals across Nunavut that are living in overcrowded houses.
Those that are on the waiting list for sometimes up to two years to get into a social housing unit.
Those are things that face every one of our communities and to me that's where we need to focus our energies on addressing or putting our housing dollars where the need is and you know, I know that sure there'll always be a small need for homeownership.
But that's been the focus for the last number of years, the last six or seven years under the previous government and the social housing has been neglected.
I think, you know, we need to catch up in that area before we move onto you putting an emphasis again, a stronger emphasis on homeownership.
That’s it for now, Mr. Chairman.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you Mr. Tootoo, those were very interesting words that you said.
Ms. Williams: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to begin by welcoming Pam and Chris, you can smile once in a while.
Chris was in Arctic Bay working for housing so its good to have you here.
I don’t think we would have thought we’d be sitting like this when we were working up in Arctic Bay.
About 40 years ago now, there were new houses being built in Arctic Bay and my mother and her age group was always very grateful for those houses.
To us they were huge, huge beautiful homes, and they were furnished with beds, tables, dishes in those times.
I think for a very long time, people were very, very grateful to have these houses in the communities.
Now they didn’t have to built qammaqs any more so I think there’s a lot of good things, that way that happened.
At the same I would like to address a couple of things that we are always probably going to be thinking about that is those houses that were built around 1970’s, early 70’s, I think they are called NTR’s.
Those are very, very tiny today and they may be occupied by 9 people, which is not very good for social life in these homes.
They may have a stove, a little stove, and they have to put washer and the dryer beside the stove which is not very good.
When there is a washing machine going, a dryer going and you are trying to cook and you try to put your little table in there, people have to live in these things all day but we call them three bedroom houses, and they should not be three bedroom houses.
They should be maybe a one bedroom place, because people, I think, they’re in a living room smaller than their sleeping area so I think living areas need to be improved and I think we’re going to be talking about more of those in detail later.
When I worked as social worker, when I went into a home like that, I always said, no wonder people are doing what they are doing.
Look at the place they are living in, those buildings are not very good any more and I think we still count them as three bedroom houses.
I recall thinking that they’re comfortable to live in because we never lived in those things before.
We don’t know how good they are.
And that is another thing that I’m going to be listening for and bringing forward will be for homeowners, that there is no Canadian Tire in this community or a Home Hardware store.
So it is very hard to buy anything to maintain your house and I know that I’ve asked this in the House before and I got the answer, that some of the communities who have businesses, supplying these things, even mechanics or furnishing people that could help you but there’s nothing in a lot of the communities.
We will need to address that when we are thinking that we’re going to put a lot more people in private homes.
When I’m thinking about that, I feel like I’m deceiving the people of Nunavut.
Yes, have your own house but you need to maintain it with no training, with no place to buy pipes or anything like that.
So we need to be looking at that as well. (interpretation) I’ll leave it at that Mr. Chairman.
I’ll make other comments as we go along.
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you, Ms. Williams.
I would like to welcome the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation and her officials. There's more and more private housing that has been built in the regions and public housing. I would like to thank you very much for providing those houses.
Even though that's the case, there are more and more people who are trying to acquire houses but there's less money that's being made available for housing even though the population is growing at the community level and there's large families.
In our communities, for those of us who have many children the houses are too small.
I'm sure I'm not the only who has a large family because there are large families out there.
Even though we have been provided with a four-bedroom house, there are some of my children who are sleeping in the living room or in any other location that they can find.
There's also a long list of people who are waiting for housing and there's diseases, sicknesses that might come around from overcrowding.
Using Repulse Bay as an example, those houses that are provided by public housing are old and not maintained well.
In some, their furnaces might be a hazard, a safety hazard to the occupants and I'm sure it contributes to the sicknesses of the occupants especially the ones who are living in the older units.
When I first received a house from among the first units, it seemed much larger and it seemed it was big as this whole chamber.
When I first moved into my house, I had two children, now I live in a four bedroom house and it seems like it's smaller than the middle of the chambers and I'm sure that's the same thing for other families with many children.
So we'll have to think about how we can improve the conditions of the houses that we make available, how we could improve the size, according to the size of families.
We have to make every effort to look for outside sources of funds if we're to make improvements.
In the future the Inuit will feel better, even today because of the poor housing and because of the poor maintenance of these houses, there's some people out there with broken hearts and people who would like to have time alone, there's some people who don't like to be around too many children.
So we have to talk about all these things, when we're talking about the shortage of housing.
I'll leave it at that, Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Mr. Chairman. Today we have moved to a new department, we have been dealing with the Department of Education for quite a number of days, as education is very important to all the members, and to the residents.
I hope you don't mind when I'm using the Department of Education as an example.
The reason why I do this Mr. Chairman is even though we have said that education is the most important because we are building the foundation for our youth and to better educate our people, right next to it is housing which is one of the most important services within this government.
In Nunavut, we have said that these two are our priorities, we have an extreme shortage of housing and we have to talk about how we can build a number of homes that are enough to house the population of Nunavut.
We have a very huge responsibility and with that in mind we have to give you support as Members of the Legislative Assembly, we will have to work together.
We will have to work together; we will have to work diligently.
Even though you are working hard, you will need us to work as hard as you.
Because of course, we are working on behalf of the people of Nunavut and we'll have to work together on those issues.
Because of the importance of the discussion at hand there's some people who have been on the waiting list and they are getting old.
I don't know how many years they have been on the waiting list.
To date they still don't have a house. Why, for what reason.
It's hard to find answer to these questions.
It's a growing population, there's a population explosion and the Nunavut Housing Corporation cannot keep up to par with the population explosion.
In 1999/2000 I believe it was, we did a tour of the Nunavut communities as a Housing Task Force, I can't remember exactly what year, but we did go to the Nunavut communities in the three regions.
The members representing the Kitikmeot did their region and so on and there was one lady who went to make a statement to the task force and they were waiting for the Nunavut Government to do something about housing, to deal with the housing issue.
We went to a community and were on the panel and the public were in front of us and a young lady went up to the mike and what she said hurt us. She said that you as the Nunavut Government, I would like to get support from you, the Nunavut Government, there's those of us that live in two bedrooms, what she said was we live in a two bedroom house and there's twelve of us in that dwelling.
Can you help us.
That was one question that she posed to the panel.
The only response that we had to this person was, yes, we feel where you are coming from, and we’re with you we’ll see what we can do.
We as elected officials have been appointed and the people are hopeful that we will resolve this problem.
So we're going to be talking a lot about these issues, those are comments that were made by the people of Nunavut, which came from the heart.
One thing as the Nunavut Housing Corporation, Mr. Chairman, when we were part of the NWT we had policies that applied to both the NWT and Nunavut which at that time was part of the NWT.
It is the same policies that apply whether it works for the Delta or the Mackenzie or Grise Fiord or Uqsuqtuq, Gjoa Haven.
We all used the same policies throughout the Northwest Territories and the people of Nunavut seemed to be left out when it was still the government of the NWT. They gave more support to the western portion of the NWT, be it subsidies for oil or whatever and at that time we had more hardship, more so than the people from the west.
I think that now that we have our own government and through the Housing Corporation we have to realize that we live in a unique environment and it's extremely cold.
Even if you touch a knife outside in the middle of winter it burns you right away.
Because of the extreme cold your first layer of skin is frozen right away.
It seems like a flame to your skin, it'll burn right away.
The cold does the exactly the same to you.
It burns you right away.
That is the harsh environment that we live in. Mr. Chairman, I feel we are making comments that come from the heart.
One of the other issues that I'd like to touch on.
Chairperson (interpretation): Your time is up.
Okay. You still have a bit of time. Mr. Puqiqnak continue.
Just a very short comment.
Mr. Chairman, I know it might be hard, but the government was able to purchase 100 units and we appreciate that even though we are still short of housing.
This year there are going to be 47 units built.
I know that will not correct the problems that we are having in Nunavut, but we will work with your department.
If we can we will be working with you and the federal government and see how we could build more units in Nunavut where some communities are not receiving new units this year.
Just a brief opening remark.
In regards to the minister's opening remarks, I don't have any comments to make on that.
But I was involved in the task force.
There is a review being done on the rent scale and I am hoping that we could get that information, that report as soon as possible.
Also, because we are short of funds, I know that there is a lot of overcrowding in houses in Nunavut.
I am just hoping that more units will be built.
I know that our elders need to have a comfortable home.
In our community we don't have any elders’ units.
This is something that we discussed in our Housing Association board meeting.
So, in the year 2001-2002 or the next year 2002-2003, this will have to be considered in my constituency because our elders need to be comfortable and live in comfortable units.
Mr. Chairman, the areas that I think need to be worked on by the Housing Corporation is that units need to be built taking into consideration the harsh environment in Nunavut.
I've taken housing maintenance programs and I know that if you are going to work as a housing maintainer you have to be an oil burner mechanic.
In order for an individual to apply for a job you have to be experienced as an oil burner mechanic.
When an individual takes a course, it is not very hard if you are experienced at working on furnaces.
The housing associations seem to spend a lot of money making sure that their workers are trained in this field, I know that in our communities when we have housing maintainers…
Mr. Chairman, the witnesses are not paying attention.
I'd like the minister and staff to listen to my comments.
A lot of our plumbers don't have that training.
When we hire individuals to work as housing maintainers, some new staff or workers don't have oil burner training.
We often have to send people out to take those courses and when they receive that certificate, they're able to raise their salary.
I know if an individual is a housing maintainer they need to take an oil burner mechanic course, it is a must under their job description so with that we seem to spend a lot of money on training individuals.
Sometimes Housing Association members will hire an individual, train the person and after the training is done, they leave the community after receiving that, or gaining that experience.
So those are the comments I wanted to make at the moment, Mr. Chairman.
I know that all the members are hoping to get more units in their communities and the problem is there are not enough funds to provide housing to all the communities.
Quite often in communities we hear about people being evicted from units because they haven't paid their rent and some individuals end up living with families and are becoming homeless but if the federal government can support or give more assistance to Nunavut I think that would improve our housing problems.
It seems we don’t get very much for housing from the federal government and I just wanted to express that, all members are working hard to get more units in their communities.
We can go on to the capital estimates.
Page 12-6.
Nunavut Housing Corporation, branch summary.
Total capital expenditures, 14 million.
General comments are over, I don't have anybody else on my list so we're on page 12-6.
Before we go ahead I'd like to state that for more details, you could go to A-27, under Nunavut Housing Corporation, you can go to appendix A for more details.
The members are free to ask general questions. Mr. Nutarak.
Which page are you on.
Just after that I would like to ask questions, I lost my page there for a minute
Chairperson (interpretation): We are on page 12-6, 14 million dollars. We don’t need agreement at this time. Can you turn the page to 12-7.
The homeowners program is 1 million dollars to Baffin.
I think that is for homeownership.
I wonder how many houses that would build, that amount of 1 million dollars.
We are on Nunavut Housing Corporation.
Details, branch summary.
Total 620 thousand dollars under headquarters.
That is where we are. Mr. Nutarak.
Mr. Nutarak (interpretation): We are on 12-7.
Under 1 million dollars variance Qikiqtaaluk homeownership program.
One million dollars how many houses would we be able to build with this homeownership amount.
Chairperson (interpretation): We have not yet reached that one yet.
We are at total headquarters region, 620 thousand dollars.
Mr. Havioyak (interpretation): If we are there, 620 thousand dollars, fire damage replacement.
If we were to use 620 thousand dollars how many units would this cover, just for example.
It is difficult to measure, as fires damage different parts of houses, perhaps one room, perhaps the kitchen is damaged.
Sometimes the bathroom could be damaged and some of the areas of the house might not have any damage whatsoever.
Or the whole house could go on fire.
This is just an estimate.
We can never be sure exactly of the future and what might catch on fire.
Thank you for that comment.
Yes, it is clear.
For instance, is this amount sufficient for the year.
If there are not too many fires or if this is not used will this be used to build homes.
This is not used if there are no fires, if we are fortunate, can we can use it in other areas.
All the money that we do not utilize would go into the new fiscal year. That amount of money would go into the new fiscal dollars for next year.
Just as we talk about the capital and the homeownership programs, in the Finance Minister’s budget address he talked about new types of homeownership programs.
If there are any new programs, what are they.
Does the department have those details finalized yet and if not when will they be forthcoming with them.
Hon. Manitok Thompson: That's a very good question.
One of the things I wanted to say under the homeownership program, the money it's not just for homeownership, the homeownership program we have here also includes emergency repair program initiatives and home repair programs, down payment assistance programs and so on. Also homeowner repair programs.
We will be coming up with new programs.
We have not finalized that yet.
I would encourage the members to give me more ideas on that if they want to.
But we are thinking of continuing the NDAP program and also probably a different type of homeownership program.
But I will certainly keep the members updated on those.
What we are doing is mobile equipment and fire damage replacement.
Can you stick to that topic at the moment.
In the amount of 620 thousand, total headquarters region.
Mr. Tootoo: There was already a request…
Mr. Nutarak (interpretation): In total headquarters region in the amount of, the fire damage replacement was already, the minister already explained it. That the 600 thousand dollars that will be carried in to the next fiscal.
That was already asked.
If there's no fire damage replacements to be made then it goes in to the next fiscal year.
Under 600 thousand, fire damage replacement, that 600 thousand, is it generating interest.
Don't wave your hands around too much. You might hit somebody.
Hon. Manitok Thompson (interpretation): Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
If there is fire damage it could be used up right away.
I would have to have a policy person answer that question, Chris Darcy.
If you don't mind Mr. Chairman, I will have him answer that question.
Chairperson (interpretation): Mr. Darcy.
Mr. Darcy: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Yes, the money stays in our bank account and it earns interest.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Darcy.
Any more questions on that 620 thousand, total headquarters.
Chairperson (interpretation): Total Qikiqtaaluk region, 6 million 920 thousand.
Here's a chance for some members to ask questions.
Questions from the members.
That’s new, we were at the top and now we are at the bottom of the page.
Mr. Nutarak you will be given a chance but Mr. McLean, it's your turn.
I'm dealing with two chairpersons here today.
I'm just trying to be fair with everybody here. Stuck in the middle of you two.
Under the homeownership program there seems more emphasis on homeownership.
I'm one of the advocates because I think homeownership is a good thing if it can be afforded in Nunavut.
With the recent fuel crisis in the world, fuel prices going up, that is getting to be less and less of an attraction.
I'm not going to beat that one to death but you know here we are, probably the highest heating costs in North America, highest power bills in North America.
We do get a subsidy but it is still extremely high, we have the highest insurance rates, we have the highest food prices, we have the highest, I could go on for a week, about the highest in everything.
But the highest construction cost to build a house, and I don't know about our wages, they say you make a lot of money in the north but I'm beginning to think that's a fallacy when you start comparing things like go north young man, go north young woman, you'll reach your goal.
We've convinced people in the north that being a part of a homeownership program is a good thing. Outside the regional centres and with the boom in Nunavut in the last few years that you could make a dollar on your housing if it's sold but that reality now is gone and I hear it in my community that you know we can't afford these houses.
I know people have to budget better and put priorities on the table on what they have to do but the fact of the matter is we still have the highest cost of living probably in the northern hemisphere, up here and that means we stop people from getting into homeownership.
I see that there's money like 1 million dollars and 550 thousand in the Kivalliq region, and 450 thousand in the Kitikmeot region and I think people today who are getting into homeownership are a young couple who are very brave and bold.
So is there going to be any change in the current homeownership program of a 15 thousand dollar down payment or is it going to be the same.
Hon. Manitok Thompson: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm looking at some changes right now. We have not finalized it but we may want to make it higher than 15 thousand dollars for homeownership programs, that's one of the options I'm looking at right now.