Thank you Madam Chair. Madam Chair, community empowerment is one of these things that is very hard to argue against. But it is also very difficult for any Member here to put it in words, what is community empowerment. We talk about making decisions at the community level. What does that mean? What are the implications for logistically, and financial control for this? Sometimes it sounds like we are involved in an experiment here. Are we in some type of biosphere, some type of scientific evaluation, to allow people to empower themselves, and then see what happens? An example is on the tabled document presented by the Minister. It says "take responsibility for the design and delivery of programs and services". What does that mean? For example, now the divisional boards of education in most of our regions have not got the funding to design, or produce aboriginal curriculum. I know that one of the people that won the Minister's Literacy Award, right now is scrambling to find the resources to do this, make the Inuktitut literacy resources. What type of responsibility delivery are you going to hand down? Some other Members talk about how the government in Yellowknife, which is 24 people here
today, have so much power. We have got to give it up. I do not know how much power I have got. I do not think I have very much. What you do have is the legislative power, not the authoritative power. You have a fiduciary responsibility, but you do not have the power to change things. Under community empowerment, what would the community gain by, for example, taking over programs - what programs and services would they take over? Would they take over social services? Could they change the social guidelines under the Financial Administration Act? No, they cannot. Would they be able to change the hours of school? Yes, they could, but that is also their right now under the Community Education Council, because of the new reforms to the Education Act.
Most of the powers for a lot of our communities are at the community level today. The controversy over the Fort Simpson Rec. Centre which made it look like this assembly was stopping it, I mean, that is a project $150 million dollar capital budget over 1.2 billion dollar budget of this government $680 million dollars of this government goes to O & M, operation and maintenance, with continued reductions to our federal transfer base. My fear, madam chair is that the idea of community empowerment is a way of, kind of, bringing down the common denominator as is were, and setting up infrastructure at the community level which will not have the resources to keep it in tune.
So, for example, if the community of Hard Luck Bay takes over the school today and then at the end of the week three boilers go down, whose is going to pay to bring in the boiler mechanics, if the community does not have it? Does that come out of the O & M budget of the school so they have to cut the land program? I do not now, no-one has answered that. Mr. Todd is shaking his head and saying no, over there, but the reality is we are laying off all of our DPW boiler people, regional people, so how do they get to the community?
I mean, these are realistic questions, these are realistic comments. I would challenge the Minister to give me five examples today, when we get into question period, of what is community empowerment? Give me five examples of what communities want. Do they want to have by-laws? We have that. Do communities want the ability to write social assistance cheques? We have that. Do communities want to build arenas? Well, that is fine, let them build the arenas, but where are they going to get the architects, the engineers, project engineers? Will that come from a company that they have to hire? Who will float those things?
So, give me five examples, I would like to see that. Maybe it is me, as Mr. Ootes said earlier today, maybe Mr. Ootes was dumb, maybe I am with Mr. Ootes, maybe I am dumb too, because I do not see the responsibility transfer that you are talking about. In parts of the Northwest Territories you have the situation where you have band councils, you have a hamlet council, then you have a regional aboriginal organization. Well, in the eastern arctic we do not have that. We either have a hamlet or a town council and we have an NTI land claim organization above it. We do not have that same duplistic or triplistic organizational structure in our communities. In that instance I do not see where community empowerment would fit. Maybe I am not understanding the big picture.
I have a problem with community empowerment empowering people. It sounds so great but show me how it is going to work and give me examples of it and then maybe I will understand. Mr. Miltenberger talked about my analogy about educating children, but what I am trying to say is that, you do not expect someone to walk before they can crawl. We have to be able to do those things, and that is not being paternalistic or patronistic.
So, that is just some general comment for discussion and, again, if I hear community empowerment any more over the next couple of weeks, maybe I will finally understand it, but today, I sit with the caucus of two and not understand it at all.
Madam Chairperson, those are my comments and I look forward to debating this later on today and questioning the Minister on the logistics of community empowerment. Thank you, Madam Chairperson.