Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a general comment first and I probably will have more specific questions after. I received a copy of a letter that was addressed to the honourable Minister responsible for MACA regarding formula funding for hamlets. I will just elaborate a little bit because I have elaborated on it for the Minister of Finance already. Last week, I said I would be presenting this case to the Minister when he comes before this committee to deal with MACA's O and M. The hamlet councils and I are concerned that the formula funding currently being provided to the hamlets is insufficient to meet the increasing demands being put on municipal governments in the NWT, particularly the small communities within Nunavut that I mentioned before. Since the development of the prime buy concept, hamlet councils have been assuming greater responsibility for evaluating and deciding upon critical local development issues. As the formation of Nunavut approaches, the volume of activity for hamlets within Nunavut is increasing even more than before.

Currently, hamlets feel they have insufficient funding for basic administrative support to deal with the routine business of running a municipal corporation. The administrative support is insufficient to devote the time needed for policy and program development in support of the council. Mr. Chairman, what I'm trying to say here is, hamlets do not only have to deal with MACA in the day to day running of the community. Other departments, agencies and organizations do not fund municipalities to deal with program and policy development. For example, the Nunasi Corporation, the NTI, DPW and Education all come to the hamlet for support that takes quite a bit of hamlets' time. Both in terms of the council's time and the administration time. There are not sufficient funds to allow other activities to take place in the area of policy and program development.

What we have been seeing is that there are too many people involved in separate programs at the territorial government level. That also creates much of the problem. One small example of this is that last year, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment advised us that funding for an apprentice that we had on staff in the hamlet was being eliminated. Since we could no longer afford to keep that person without funding assistance, we issued the person a lay- off notice. Within a couple of days of issuing the lay-off notice, another person from within the same office of the government advised us that they did have another program through which the person could be funded. This is but one small example of how it is confusing if you are a hamlet dealing with all kinds of departments. It becomes very frustrating. If there was one department dealing and coordinating with hamlets and between the departments the hamlet is dealing with, this would make it a lot easier.

Another issue of concern is the employees of the hamlets have requested that they be given equal treatment with the GNWT employees, with respect to vacation travel assistance. I talked about this with the Minister of Finance when he was at the witness table. Currently, the hamlet of Coral Harbour, for example, follows the old system whereby those going out on the land don't get nearly as much as those who take a flight somewhere like Winnipeg. As the majority of our hamlet employees either take on the land assistance or fly to destinations much closer to Coral Harbour than Winnipeg, the hamlet could not afford the additional funds required to move to the new government system without significant increases in the amount of formula funding that currently exists.

What the hamlet is requesting is that our formula funding be increased so that we can provide the same level of benefits to hamlet employees as government employees currently enjoy. The concern, Mr. Chairman, is that there is pressure, fairly attractive pressure, to have the hamlet be more involved under the transfer initiative program. Some of these initiatives will affect present government employees. For example, if the hamlet wants to take over the Department of Public Works, the maintenance person from Public Works will probably be transferred to the hamlet but that person will want to continue to enjoy his present benefits. Because such a move will probably be blended into the formula funding, rather than a separate agreement, that person will be denied what he used to enjoy when he was a government employee.

These are the kinds of concerns, Mr. Chairman, that the hamlet and I look forward to getting a favourable response on. I totally support the hamlet's request that there is an overview, at least a review of the present formula financing in light of the initiatives that will be taking place under the Honourable Minister Kakfwi.

Another concern I have in my general comments, Mr. Chairman, is that I asked a question of the Minister of MACA early this afternoon that required just a yes or no answer. On February 22, the Minister could not reply to my question regarding hockey players -- who happened to come from a small community, that being Coral Harbour -- who came in second and not one of them was selected for the Arctic Winter Games team. When the Minister did not know what the selection process was, I asked him to look into it and he promised to look into the matter to ensure that fairness and equality was practised in the selection process to avoid discrimination against small communities. My simple question this morning was, had the Minister found out why no players from the senior men's hockey team that came in second place were chosen to represent the Northwest Territories in the Arctic Winter Games in Slave Lake, Alberta this month.

My simple question, Mr. Chairman, was had the Minister found out. The answer should have been yes or no, either he found out or didn't find out. He took the question as notice. I really wonder why the question was taken as notice when the answer would have been yes or no. If he hadn't found out, fine. If he had, I would have wanted to find out what the selection process is that was used. I was a little bit disappointed. We have only four days left before Arctic Winter Games starts. I believe they start on Saturday and it would be very nice to be able to report back to Coral Harbour to say what I found out. To say either, we're sorry, we're still very proud of you but this is what the Minister said. Yet, to date, I have not received a response. These are my general comments, Mr. Chairman. If we are going through the estimates line by line, I will probably have more. Qujannamiik.