Mr. Chairman, I want to make it clear that I am enthusiastic about community transfer. I would love to
see it happen; I think it is key to the very credibility of this government in many parts of the Northwest Territories, to enhancing the credibility of this government. It is critical to spreading employment opportunities in Nunavut, that we have a success with community transfer.
When I was in Cabinet in the previous Legislature, we tried very hard to deliver on community transfer, and I can say without shame that we failed miserably; it didn't work. Although there were a lot of efforts and Mr. Wray was the Minister then in charge, he had every commitment and personal dedication in the world to this, it never happened. Yes, there were a few economic development officers transferred. Yes, there were a few other government PYs transferred. But in the sense of giving communities real powers to set priorities, handle significant amounts of money, control their own lives at the community level, we made no progress.
I have to, with the greatest respect, say to the Minister that especially considering the numerous person years and sizable financial resources that have been put in this area over the last three years, I don't think that we have made an awful lot of progress with this government either. And I want to say clearly, I don't think it is from lack of effort or commitment on the part of the Minister and his staff. Somehow we haven't quite got the formula to make it work. I suspect it has to do with the nature of bureaucracies; there is a certain interdepartmental rivalry and there is a certain kind of resistance to giving away authority to communities so that we have to fight in order to make it happen.
I don't want to criticize anyone, Mr. Chairman, but I think the purpose of this committee is to look at the amount of money that we are dedicating to this task and deciding whether we are getting value for money. I look at eight person years and I, frankly, wonder what they are doing. Now we have an answer that two or three of them are not there and they are doing other good work.
There are real problems with this community transfer arrangement. I will speak for Nunavut because I know about Nunavut; we have paid great attention to the Cape Dorset experience in the Baffin. We held a leaders' meeting in Dorset to find out first hand how they had done it, we were hoping that our communities could profit from the Dorset experience.
What have we learned -- and it was put together in a resolution at our last Baffin leaders' summit -- is that the training and community development component has to be enhanced and that the absence of a component in training and community development is an impediment.
We recommended that it would be more appropriate if personnel who have a presence and credibility in the region -- through being known in the region -- deliver the CTI programs, rather than people from headquarters who are not well-known. I am not questioning their abilities, but they are not known to the community leaders and, therefore, there are barriers for that reason.
We noted the problems about the barriers the Financial Administration Act imposes to block funding, which I know Mr. Pollard is trying to correct through an amendment to these
main estimates, and I know Mr. Kakfwi has been looking at solutions. But, nonetheless, that has been an impediment.
We also had a serious discussion about the fact that the wide-open menu -- pick and choose as you see fit -- may not be as effective as we might have hoped, even though it's extremely democratic. In fact, if communities instead had two or three choices of medium, large and small responsibilities and models were developed, we might have more take-up, rather than leaving it wide open and, therefore, leaving communities quite uncertain about what to take.
There also seems to have been, and all you have to do is talk to the good people who were involved in Cape Dorset, quite a labyrinth of an approval process. Maybe ground has been broken, it's simpler now, and Dorset has paved the way to an easier process. But, if you talk to them, as we did, they said it was a pretty tough process. They spoke very highly of Mr. Kakfwi's personal commitment, but they had to journey to Yellowknife at great expense more than once to make it all happen. I don't want to rant and rave on and on here, Mr. Chairman, but I do want to support Mr. Zoe. I have to say, despite the effort, the money, and the eight person years, I don't know if we've got an awful lot to show for it.
I think we should be honest here with ourselves and say nobody is questioning the effort that was put into it, but somehow it is not taking. I would have thought housing for sure would have. In the early months of this government, it seemed there was a lot of interest in the Dene communities in housing because it is a visible, important program and Dene communities had taken initiatives in building their own housing, particularly block funding and things like that. Housing seems noticeably absent in the list of successful community transfers.
I don't know what has gone wrong and I don't want to blame anybody, but I would have to say, for the amount of effort we're putting into it, something has to change. Maybe the answer is not to reduce these PYs -- although that is something that Members of this committee have to ask: if you need that many PYs -- maybe the answer is to change the whole approach. I would hope, now that we're in the last year of this government, that the Minister and his officials will search their souls and ask if we had to do it over again, would we do it over again? Would we do it differently? Are there ways of improving this? How can we make it happen?
We all want it to happen but, largely, it doesn't seem to have happened. I acknowledge the progress made here and there. I'm not diminishing how important the oil and gas transfer was for Norman Wells. But, really, in terms of communities grabbing hold of their own lives, not including Dorset and Good Hope, we haven't got a lot of examples to show yet. Maybe a number of them are being nurtured and are going to happen.
