Agreed.

Agreed.

Agreed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I did not

have an opportunity to speak on this yesterday. I wanted to speak from two different angles. Firstly, from the perspective of Health and Social Services as the Minister because of the fact that we are dealing with community empowerment initiatives. A lot of times, Health and Social Services' programs are the ones that are reluctantly looked at or the last to be looked at. There are serious concerns with looking at taking these on because of the fact they are a bit more complicated than your standard transfer of assets or of the programs that do not deal with individuals.

These Health and Social Services' programs deal with individuals and their daily lives. Very many times there is a lot of emotion involved in how these services are delivered at the community level and it impacts the constituents directly. A lot of this also has to do with some of the statutory requirements because of the fact that you are dealing with the safety of individuals and constituents in your communities.

But, having said that, we do have the Town of Iqaluit in the past, over 10 years now, has taken on the delivery of social services in their town council, recognizing the importance of it in their community.

We also have Cape Dorset that has taken on the social services' program since 1994 under the Community Transfer Initiative. Again, they recognize the importance of those programs. As I indicated in this House in the past, the Town of Hay River has taken a significant step in taking over the management of their hospital services there under a management agreement with our department, with the goal that by April 1 of next year, taking on the additional social services aspects and the public health aspects in their community and take on the whole social and health sphere of services in their community.

Since we announced our community empowerment initiatives, other municipalities throughout the Territories have not shied away from it even though Health and Social Services is, as I indicated before, a complicated and sometimes scary type of programs to be considering. We have Cambridge Bay looking at taking on social services. The Dogrib Treaty 11 group is looking at taking over the whole health and social services' programs within their area of communities, other communities which includes Fort Resolution, Fort Liard, Inuvik, Yellowknife and Norman Wells. All these communities are at different stages of discussions and negotiations in assuming health and social services' programs, Mr. Chairman.

Just in respect to my own constituency and my own experience with municipal government. Since 1979, I have been actively involved at different stages whether as mayor or as a councillor with the Hamlet of Cambridge Bay. Back when I first came North, we had regional headquarters our of Fort Smith to deal with. Then it moved to Yellowknife before we became a region, and even with that, all the decisions seemed to have had to have been made in Yellowknife. We are always waiting for decisions from the government in Yellowknife. Of course, we are looking forward to Iqaluit when that comes in 1999, but I think what that showed me and us as community leaders is the fact that we experienced a lot of concerns. We experienced a lot of frustrations with having to wait to get back answers and to wait on programs and changes that we wanted to carry out at the local level because we did not have the authority to do that. Always at the grass roots level, the desire was to take on more programs and have more of the decision-making.

I think the community empowerment initiative of this government supports that type of move towards that. Cambridge Bay right now I can tell you is negotiating for management of the local airport and the services surrounding that; taking over Public Works and also taking over Social Services. The community of Kugluktuk, the other major community in my constituency, is negotiating to take over Housing and take over Public Works -- all of these with a time frame in mind of April 1, 1997. However, I would like to qualify that. They recognize, as we do as a government, that there are problems and stumbling blocks whether it be housing for some of the employees that they want to take on, whether it is training to develop their human resources to be able to manage and deliver these programs, whether it is having a contingency available in case there are unexpected problems such as outbreaks of circumstances beyond their control. Those are all things they recognize as problems, but overall they support, the concept and the thrust towards community empowerment. With that, I think we have to provide them the resources whether it is the physical assets, whether it is the financial support or the human resources and the support to allow them to enter into these initiatives to take on the programs because ultimately, the local community leaders know the community the best and they know the people that they are serving at the grassroots level. They should know.

Because of that knowledge, their decisions on identifying the priorities of where to spend their program dollars the best to serve their people. So with that, I think it is time to move on this. I know a lot of people think it might be too fast of a pace but the fact remains it has to be done and we should learn from some of the mistakes that may happen but ultimately we are heading in the right direction Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Chairman. I would like to say a few words as well. Very briefly, I would like to speak on community empowerment because we are starting to give these programs to the communities and I would like to thank everybody for supporting this. And also, even though the people that were not supportive, I would like to thank them for speaking on this as well because we do understand their concerns and from the concerns that were spoken on and we learned from these concerns. So it is very important to us and what was talked about yesterday for example there were concerns that there might not be enough people that have enough training and these were some of the concerns that I heard yesterday.

And also, like people are concerned about the cut-backs as well and there are a lot of concerns about the schools. Like for example, if something went wrong with the furnace, who would fix it, stuff like that. Right from there we learned quite a bit and we know that there are a lot of people that are trained in the communities and there is a problem there but even though there are a lot of people that do not speak English but they are trained enough to work. Even though they did not go through the school system, they are able to work, for example on furnaces.

I would like to thank all the Members for supporting this, even the people that did not support this and I do understand the reasons. I believe in the future that we have to start going somewhere and I am positive that the communities are able to look after their own affairs and when we start moving, it has to start following. I am sure that the communities are able now.

Also I would like to say that in the regions our staff are prepared to train in the community empowerment. This is their knowledge and they are good at dealing with these kinds of issues. I believe that we are ready and prepared to start controlling our own affairs. We do have the staff and they will be training the people. I also wanted to say thank everybody very much. We are not just giving it to the communities but we are moving towards it. They have to be ready, they have to let us know that they are prepared and ready. They have to be willing and we will support them with our departments and we will be working together with the different departments when we do give the communities the empowerment. Thank you Mr. Chairman.

Thank you Mr. Chairman and also I find it very interesting - am I able to speak on the issue? Mr. Chairman? Am I able to talk about the subject as well?

Thank you Mr. Chairman I will respond because it seems to be referring more to social programs and how he would see that working I guess and problems in that area. I guess my answer would be that first of all, we would have to make sure that when we negotiated the transfer that adequate financial resources went to the community that should allow them to provide whatever sphere of services that they are going to be delivering. We would have to make sure that we provide enough funding to last for the whole year.

If there were problems because of things outside of the control of the municipality or the group that is designated to take on delivery of those programs, I can use for example, because it is in our communities we have these outbreaks of RSV almost on an annual basis in the Nunavut area in particular because of our longer winters. If, for example, a community had the health care programs in their community and they had an outbreak of RSV, I mean that would be an exceptional circumstance where we would have a pool of contingency funds somewhere, whether it be at the regional level or the territorial level, to deal with those types of extraordinary circumstances that would come about during the course of a year throughout the Territories, no matter what community it would be. I guess that, in trying to answer the Member's question on funding difficulties where they ran out of money because of extraordinary circumstances, that is the way that I would envision it working Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Chairman. In regards to funding for communities. They would be given training on financial management and they would have reviews on program development to see where their financial situation is going. Thank you Mr. Chairman.