CMHC gets northern office – in the Sout8

The federal government created a “northern” office for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. on July 1 – even though it’s located in Calgary, Alta.

The CMHC is a Crown corporation that funds social housing for low income people in the three northern territories.

Until 1993, the CMHC paid for the construction of new social housing in the territories, and still supplies territorial governments with money to pay the operation and maintenance costs of their social housing stocks, under an agreement that will run out in about 20 years.

A press release issued just before Nunatsiaq News press-time this week from the office of Joe Fontana, the federal housing minister, says the corporation will create an entity called “CMHC Northern Housing” to better manage its northern housing responsibilities.

The press release says Fontana will visit Rankin Inlet, Whale Cove and Chesterfield Inlet, but doesn’t say when. No one at his office was able to provide that information in phone calls made late Wednesday afternoon.

It also contains no indication of when Fontana will respond to a $1.9 billion proposal for an Inuit housing program submitted to the federal government in 2004.