Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have some general comments for Department of Municipal and Community Affairs. They have to do with the reorganization that is currently going on in the department.
As Members of the House are aware, the Standing Committee on Finance said in our Investing in our Future report that the committee was unaware of the need for such dramatic changes and the need was not documented and presented to the Legislative Assembly for consideration and discussion. We were wondering why these changes were felt to be necessary and why they were made in such a hurry, apparently without benefit of a well-thought-out plan. Therefore, we made a recommendation that this department come to the Standing Committee on Finance with a report by December 23, 1994.
We say this because this department has been viewed by Members on this side of the House as providing a good service to the people in the communities, especially to municipal governments. There was a good working relationship there. With the sudden change, it caught a lot of people by surprise and there are a lot of concerns expressed by Members on this side of the House and people in the communities that I represent about the changes that have taken place at the headquarters level, with the way headquarters is working now and with the people there who are being moved around. It is causing some concern to myself and the people I represent.
I just wanted to let the department know that the briefing that we received on October 25th addressed many questions but, unfortunately, it was not presented in the House to the public. The reorganization is going on and what is done is done, but personally, I just wanted to make sure that it is done for a good purpose and, in the final analysis, this department will continue to provide good services to the communities, and that it will be more effective and efficient.
Like I have always said in the House, it is this government's responsibility to provide programs and services to people in the communities and we should try to find the best way, the most efficient and effective economic way to do that. If the purpose of the reorganization is to do that, then it is a good way to look at it.
My first, immediate impression of the reorganization was that I wasn't aware of it, we hadn't asked for it, yet it was happening. I expressed annoyance at that because of the suddenness. We all want to know that what is happening in the department is good for the people in the communities. But, there are going to be some concerns with the people at the headquarters level who are going to be moved around. I understand that there are some divisions that have been amalgamated or done away with and changed, the people within the headquarters level have been moved around, and some of their positions are going to be obsolete, and people in these positions have to compete with people for other positions within the department. That causes some concerns for the people in those positions; I'm aware of that.
I wanted to know, is there a change in the philosophy of this department? Is that one of the reasons for the reorganization? I'm wondering, the way the department used to run was with a fiscal which helped the communities out in their accounting and in the way they do business. Is there a shift away from that to help the communities develop into stronger communities? Is there more emphasis on community development? I'm wondering about that.
I say this because I go back to the history of this government and the way local government was developed in the north, everybody is aware of that history. Myself, my background as a Dene, a former chief, I worked at the community level for many years. Among the Dene, we've had our own traditional way of governing ourselves for many, many years. This whole territorial government system was imposed on people who were already living up here many years ago. The way aboriginal people were governing themselves, I don't think was incorporated into the way local government was developed. It was a foreign system that was imposed, and I think for many years the Dene, on the western side, didn't accept this government for that reason, because it was an imposed system without our involvement and without our inclusion in the way local government should be functioning.
I think that happened on the Inuit side as well. I've been doing a little bit of research on the thing called the Baker Lake incident, where about 20 years ago, the Commissioner of the day cancelled community development workshops that were trying to develop local government using the knowledge of the local people. Instead, they developed this guided democracy principle. That's the way this department was functioning. There was a model of the guided democracy. It was not really utilizing the traditional way of developing local government, and we felt it in the west.
But, in more recent years, some of the communities have developed into hamlet councils for funding purposes. Mainly just to get more funding from the government, some of the communities have developed into hamlet councils, although there still remain the chief and band councils in these communities.
As a result of that, in my constituency we have four communities that are still under a chief and band council. That's the community government. These are the communities that I've been talking about with regard to your department developing a program to help them get assistance to run their communities. At the present time, some of these smaller communities are using band core funding that bands receive from the federal government to run their organization. They've been using some of their band core funding to run their municipalities because they don't have enough funding to fund the municipality.
Because these communities are still run by a chief and band council, this department and this government is not helping them because they are not a public government. So they've been left aside and ignored, and they've had to make do with whatever little money they had to run their communities.
What I'm getting at is that the philosophy of the department was based on introducing and implementing a different type of local government than what was already there. Because the government system that is traditional there did not fit into the guidelines or the principles of the department, they did not get funding. It was a fundamental, basic principle there.
So if the reorganization of this department is going on, I'm wondering whether that philosophy is also going to be changed to allow for communities such as the four in my area that are presently under a chief and band council community government, whether they're going to be looked upon by this department now as being the community government. Or, do they all have to get underneath the department through the hamlet council system or with the charter community system before they get adequate funding? This is my concern with this department. Perhaps the Minister and her staff could tell me about the structural changes and, if there are any, also basic philosophical changes that are also going on, and how
the department is approaching community governments. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.