Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to preface my remarks by stating that I support the idea of communities controlling and managing their own affairs and especially in areas that are of prime concern to them. I am going to make some general statements which will include questions but I will come back to the questions at a later time. I just simply want to run through the process of my statement first, and then when other general statements are done then I will come back to questions.
Community empowerment to me is an extremely complex process despite the fact that it looks simple. It is a simple statement that has tremendous complexities. This initiative of community empowerment is driving the direction of a great number of programs and people in this government. It must not be instituted too fast nor in the wrong way. It must be implemented with checks and balances built in. A big question to me is, will communities be forced to take on community empowerment under this initiative and who will the determine the pace of program transfers. If communities truly get control of many government programs, do they understand that there will be no or greatly diminished central expertise, advice or central agency to which to refer many disputable matters.
This program has so many implications that it is incredible. Communities will become responsible for: public housing, various health and social services, adoptions, local schools, workfare and welfare reform, community justice, local renewable resources, resource offices, economic development, transportation, education, renewable resources as mentioned. We are going to built 52 bureaucracies if every community takes this on. We are also going to built 52 political bodies. We now have the economy of scale with the GNWT handling this direct.
I have been told that the transfer to most community programs should be complete by 1999, and this was in, I believe, one of the documents I had been given. I would like to ask and pose a comment about consultation. The government keeps saying for many years, community leaders and the public have said that the communities want more local control. My question is, has a survey been done on this, and where is that survey? We need a comprehensive assessment done to make sure that the services in the communities do not deteriorate and that the interrelationship of all government departments with MACA are studied.
One of the main thrusts of the program is that we have got to cut costs, and the main document issued, it states that we can no longer afford our current system of program delivery. I guess my question is, what does that mean? That communities must be the ones to do it and make it cheaper to do it? And how much will we save in a year by doing this?
My big question is, what happens if some communities choose a program, say social services, and others do not. Where do the regional employees go? Do they work for the community or do they stay on the region? And I guess if that is the case, for the next couple of years, until this whole program is through, I just do not understand how this saves money, which seems, as I said earlier, to have been a primary purpose behind community empowerment.
The other big question we have to ask ourselves is, what will the Government of the Northwest Territories look like when this is all finished? And what have we created out there? What we have created 52 success stories.
Another big concern I have is for the tax based communities. After all, what is good for one, is good for all, and if you are going to do it and ? town, you have got to do it in Yellowknife, you have got to do it in Hay River. And what is going to happen with the department of social services, are you going to hand the whole thing over to Yellowknife, Hay River, Inuvik, Iqaluit. It has to be addressed. So my big question comes. What will the territorial government look like at the end of all this? The other question I have is, a big, big question. Have other options been explored? Let me just raise the big questions. One, did we, the 13th Legislative Assembly approve of this program? Have pilot projects been done in communities, and have those pilot projects been assessed? If so, where are the reports on that? Has the union been considered in this, and the employees been considered, the present employees of the GNWT? What is the timeframe? We need success models. What about the tax-based communities? What about the community in maturity? Those are my big questions. I will address those later Madam Chair. I wanted to make this a general statement. Thank you.