Thank you, Madam Chair. It is surprising to my counterpart here, Mr. Miltenberger, I will speak.
Just to add a few more things to what has already been said, in Inuvik, the council has been looking at taking over more and more of the authority that usually belonged out of its hands. I heard some comments earlier on that we might be creating 52 other bodies to do this, well, we already have all the councils in place. All they want is some of the power. I agree that we need to make sure we have the support there and the training. That is what I have been hearing is going to happen and I will do my best to make sure that is there for the other communities.
I know a lot of people have been saying it and I think when we all got together early on in our time here in the Assembly, a large majority, as I have been hearing here as well, were saying it is time to bring the control and the responsibility to the communities. I know that during the election campaign, one of the things was that it was not to bring the people to the government, it was to bring the government to the people. I believe that is the right approach with community empowerment; that is, instead of having the government and all the control situated many miles away, we will be bringing the control to the community where the decisions can be made.
I believe there needs to be some factors put in place, some framework, that would make sure that failure, while not impossible, will be greatly reduced. I think we need to make sure those standards are in place, but it has to be flexible for a community to make choices of its own and have the flexibility to do a lot of the work it wants to do now that it does not have. We have heard an example used in our meetings and it is a good one to use here. It is a comparison of the National Building Code. It is a framework, but when you look at all the houses that are around, they do not all look the same. That has been one problem with the way past government operated. We have built something at this level and brought it out to the communities and told the communities to make it work there when it is not going to work.
We hear about the problems that happened in the past, well, I think a lot of it is not directly related to communities because I know in some communities, they wanted to take the power over, but it was within the departments themselves of having the right information and knowing what to do. That is why we have heard the different terminologies: community transfer initiative, now community empowerment.
We definitely need to bring the control to the people in the communities. We have heard it stated earlier in the different government bodies out there right now. I think that we have heard people say we need more time to do things. Well, this initiative has been on the books and worked on, changed and readapted for quite a number of years. I think there will be, even as division comes upon us, some initiatives started from this Assembly that will move forward to other governments that will have to deal with those matters that are before them, but they were initiated at this level.
I would encourage the department to continue the work. Make sure the resources are available to the communities that need help and to those that would need more time, to give them more time. Also, to those who want to take the control over sooner, to have that ability to do the same. I think we will find that there will come a time when there will be fewer and fewer mistakes made at those levels. We do have to give the communities the opportunity to prove themselves. Like I say, if we developed a framework that gives them the opportunity to develop and change things the way that they are normally done, it will vastly improve the way this government does business. I know we said we would change the way government does business. Thank you, very much, Madam Chair.
---Applause