Evidence of meeting #39 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was training.
Chief Financial Officer, Nunavut Housing Corporation
The vast majority of it is spent funding the LHOs, for things like electricity, all the utility costs, water and garbage services, the administration and maintenance. All of our LHOs do the maintenance for all the public housing, so it's basic repairs and that sort of thing.
Liberal
Todd Russell Liberal Labrador, NL
This is to maintain your existing units, the vast majority of it. What percentage of the budget is that?
Chief Financial Officer, Nunavut Housing Corporation
It costs about $22,000 per unit, and we have 4,200 units to maintain.
Liberal
Todd Russell Liberal Labrador, NL
What I'm getting at is if you have all these new units coming online that you're going to have to assume maintenance for, at the same or a comparable rate, you will have another 1,000 units times $22,000. If your base budget stays at $180 million, what happens?
Chief Financial Officer, Nunavut Housing Corporation
Not only that, our funding from CMHC is dropping and will be eliminated by 2037, so we're also losing our funding from CMHC over the next so many years. Right now it's dropping at a rate of about $3 million or $4 million a year. That's what we are losing on our CMHC funding for operations. That is a challenge that is facing us. We're looking at cost-saving measures, but there's a limit to what we can do. We're looking at working with other GN departments for more energy efficiency. We're building more energy-efficient units. We're looking at alternative energy sources and that sort of thing.
Liberal
Todd Russell Liberal Labrador, NL
I appreciate all that, and I think everybody here will appreciate that more houses are necessary and it needed to be done, because a lot of people have come to the committee and said that housing was a major barrier to economic development from a whole bunch of rationales--because of staff trying to get places to stay or because somebody takes a job but can't get housing; because of poor education and health outcomes because of lack of affordable housing and things like that. I just want to make that point. I'm trying to understand a little better.
Mr. Doyle, you said if we didn't have this program now, it would be the equivalent of going from $60 a month in the south to $6,000 up here. Is it that heavily subsidized?
Chief Executive Officer, Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation
Actually, that's a blend of two questions. The 100 times increase, if you will, per unit of connectivity spread out over the end-user experience would translate into about triple or more cost. The subsidy is significant. I'm just thinking of my breakdown of the figures, but I think you're looking, in this current infrastructure, to roughly half being for raw bandwidth purchase, matched by the private sector as well. It actually is much more expensive.
Liberal
Todd Russell Liberal Labrador, NL
You're on a program. How much do you get in that program on a yearly basis?
Chief Executive Officer, Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation
The next couple of years' budget, with infrastructure too, coming collectively from all the sources, is about $21 million from the feds, through Infrastructure Canada, matched by $21 million from the private sector--dollar for dollar, 50-50.
Liberal
Todd Russell Liberal Labrador, NL
It is important for us to understand those particular dynamics. Maybe my other colleagues can jump in and help me.
Do you get this $21 million from the federal government on a yearly basis?
Chief Executive Officer, Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation
No, that's spread out over the next several years. That represents a couple of years' budget.
Liberal
Todd Russell Liberal Labrador, NL
Okay, and when you look at the $21 million and the matched amount from the private sector, where does that money go? Just give me a hint.
Chief Executive Officer, Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation
It's like renting versus owning, so you're purchasing raw bandwidth over which you're layering the network. There are obviously other equipment costs and things like that, but the bulk of the money is for raw bandwidth. If you invested in fibre and cable, for example, you'd have something concrete in the end. It's like paying rent versus paying a mortgage.
Don't quote me, but I suspect this study will show that in eight or nine years--or in some timeframe like that--it will be cheaper to make the capital investment to do fibre versus having ongoing satellite.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bruce Stanton
Thank you, Mr. Russell.
If I could interject one question here for Mr. Doyle to try to get some clarity around this, what do the actual users pay--or do they?
Chief Executive Officer, Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation
The actual user pays $60 a month for a basic account.
Chief Executive Officer, Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation
Exactly. The initial cost of entry is $150 for the account and the modem, and then there's the ongoing $60. You can get higher grade accounts if you're a business, but I would say the majority are in that $60 range.
Conservative
Chief Executive Officer, Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation
The subsidy is around $100.
Chief Executive Officer, Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation
Approximately, yes.
Conservative
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
Thank you, and I thank the witnesses for being here today.
With this committee travelling through Yukon, Northwest Territories, and now Nunavut, the one thing I've noticed is that each community or territory is different and distinct. When I say that, I look at homes...in this committee our mandate is for economic development.
The one question I have really isn't economically tied, but I'm wondering about the ratio of home ownership to rental. If you could quickly answer that, then I'll get to my other questions.
Acting President, Nunavut Housing Corporation
The 4,200 public housing units we have in Nunavut represent 65%. We know that 19% of dwellings in the territory were purchased privately. So if you add 65% and 19%, the difference between that and 100% is for private rental.
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
With the economic action plan and the allotment of funds to Nunavut for home construction or housing units, how many jobs were created?