Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I would like to make a few comments, and I do have questions in future form on community empowerment. I noted in the Minister's speech that she said she expected the implementation plan for community empowerment initiatives to be presented to Cabinet in early November.
Madam Chair, over the last two or three weeks and previous to that we have been hearing from the government that community empowerment is nothing new. It has been going on for years and years, and we are carrying it over as a matter of fact from the previous government. So why are we presenting it in November for consideration? That is one of my questions.
I would like to expand a little bit on that, Madam Chair. I agree with the Minister and with Cabinet that community empowerment is nothing new - it had all different kinds of names before this and it has been in effect for years.
A prime example was in the past where settlements were asked if they feel comfortable they could take on responsibilities and become a Hamlet. That was basically the same thing that is happening now - is that you take on more responsibilities. Most of the communities on the coast took on the responsibilities and became Hamlets. But I note that there is a fair amount in the southern portion, particularly in the Fort Smith region, that did not want to become Hamlets and preferred to have their services supplied by the government through DPW and whoever.
In the communities on the coast, and I know there were a few that failed as Hamlets, but they were not allowed to go back to settlement status. They were encouraged to mend their mistakes, the government poured more money into them, and basically bought them out of the financial difficulties they had. The government would not let them fail because the government would then have to admit the program did not work.
Lots of these communities are still in the same financial situation - barely surviving. Some of them managed to do good. They learned responsibility but that is not to say that, you know, they took on Social Services, they took on Housing, they took on everything else. We are just talking municipal services. We are not talking about communities taking on Social Services, taking on Housing, taking on Justice. Where is a community of 100 or 200 people going to find all this expertise.
That is a big question. They may have the expertise and know-how for municipal services but what makes you think that they have the rest of it. Do not forget that any community that has people with the ambition to reach grade 12, 99% of them do not stay in the community - they are gone! They went to some place where they got a better job, a better salary - they are gone! They are not there no more. And even those with grade 12 who did not proceed onto further than that are being in jobs of unskilled labour. They are not into managing Social Services or Justice Committees. This all takes time. Nobody pays these people to go to these committee meetings. So why should they - what makes you think that they are going to do this voluntarily day after day and month after month.
You know, it may be that once in a while a community will get into a situation, Madam Chair, where a drastic event will happen in a community to bring everybody together and everybody works together to try to solve the social problems again but social problems are so big because they really - the grass root of the problem is drug and alcohol. And as long as this government does not address that, they are wasting their time with the rest of it. It is true. It is a basic thing. I think most communities realize that.
But my point Madam Chair is this - in the past if communities failed as a Hamlet, they had the expertise of the government departments to fall back on. They had government staff to come in and assist them. But we laid off all our staff last April for DPW - we will lay off some more in Transportation and probably DPW and Housing. So who are these failing communities going to count on? It will not be this government because we do not have the staff. So we are setting up our communities for a major fall.
We are going to accept a lesser standard of services in these communities. That is the bottom line that I see. Because they will not have the ability to go back to the government, and say, hey, we need help. The government says they will have it, but you cannot have both, lay off all your staff, and have the expertise. That just does not make common sense. One or the other is going to lose. I think in the end the communities are getting scared.
I think I may have mentioned this before. In my communities, we have tried taking on social assistance, social services. It was a political disaster. Anybody that was on that social committee, was sure not to get elected again. That was the basic fact. Nobody sat on that committee. Nobody would touch it. There was no way you could ever get re-elected. We took on housing.
We had a thing in Sachs Harbour, called Prime Body Concept. It took on everything in the community. It was of the first ones to try this thing. In the end, the communities left it. It just did not work. They did not have the expertise in the community. They did not have the amount of people that are required to run this type of operation.
I believe that in the bigger centres like Inuvik, like Rankin Inlet, there are the people there. You have big enough numbers, plus you have a big enough number of outsiders, non-aboriginal who are into this type of thing. I think it could work in the bigger communities.
But I think the government is asking too much, if they think it is going to work in the little communities at this point in time. What worries me is not that is going to fail. It may even succeed. What worries me, is that we are laying off so much staff, that we cannot take back what we gave them. For instance, airports are critical in small communities in the Arctic. If they fail on the maintenance at the airport, how do we get the thing back. If all the equipment is broken down, how do we go in there and clear the snow off that runway. We end up hiring contractors who cost us more in the long run. It is a fact of life. It has happened before. Those are the type of things that I am really concerned about. I am not saying my communities are not experienced enough, or educated enough, which is one word the Minister used, but I am saying that we should not think that if one does it, they are all going to do it. What I am worried about, is because one is doing it, we are laying off all our staff. That is what I am worried about. That I think is the major difference, as to what has happened in the past, versus what we are going to do now, is the fact that the government is not going to be able to go in there and pull that community out, supply the services that we are mandated to supply to those communities. That is what I am worried about. It suggests here that communities...can they keep the surpluses. Yes, but also, if they go into deficit, they have to be responsible for over-spending. How? What are they going to use to pay it, peanuts? It says here, can they move money from infrastructure to human services? Yes. It is assumed then, they can do it the other way too. They can move money from human services to infrastructure. But supposing a community did that, took all the welfare money and built a road. That is not going to stop that welfare guy from coming and asking us for welfare. And because of the law, we are still going to have to supply it. So that is the type of things I am worried about. In the eight, nine months that I have been sitting here, I have not been convinced that we will be able to undo what was done, until it is back where we started. Thank you.