Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, feel that community empowerment is a very important subject for my riding. I agree with what Mr. Ootes was referring to in
his remarks about how to be cautious as to how much empowerment we are giving to the communities. I am always kind of reluctant to get into transferring of all those powers to communities as soon as possible because I believe in some caution as to how fast we are dealing with this whole transfer. The block funding to the community transfer is possibly for one whole year, and if they run out within a certain time, how soon they will be able to re-fund them again. If they more or less run out of community, or misuse of funds for some particular reason, I guess, and because of some experience the community leaders might not have.
Will this government be able to rescue the municipal government if they have to misuse the funds? I am quite concerned about this. Do we have anybody to coordinate or to look after them, as far as the regional directors are concerned; that is, if they are still in office within the respective communities and regions?
I would certainly like to ask another question on an unrelated matter. It is certainly good to see that we have some community empowerment and some transfers to communities because it is very important. I remember back in the 1970s or the 1980s when people in the communities were always concerned about running their own affairs, and I guess it took time to have some of the powers being transferred to the communities. It is certainly good to see that they are going to get some benefit from the transfers and, as Mr. Ootes said, most of the communities, I guess, are not totally prepared but they are probably just anxious to go over and try to take over some of the responsibilities that we are already initiating.
Certainly, at the community level right now, there are going to be a lot of other transfers that might be taking place. A lot of activity is going on right now because of land claims coming up. Once the land claim is in place, the communities will be busy concentrating only on that issue. Then they will follow-up on the programs that they might be administering through the federal government. They might be asking the federal government to transfer more from the departments for their benefit and then they might be asking for more transfers and powers from this territorial government as well.
As I said earlier on, they have been more or less been asking the territorial government since the 1970s to see whether they could have more of the responsibility transferred to the communities because they always felt that they were not always in trust with the territorial government running their affairs for them. I think they were just as capable of running their own affairs for many, many years is what I have been seeing. Eventually, I think the reality has been coming to surface.
What I was trying to get at earlier was that there might be some other transfers that they might be seeking regarding how to administer liquor licensing and all that stuff, and possibly gambling. The Department of Justice probably wants to get involved in it, too, and see if they are able to control their own community policing, municipal by-law officers and all that, I guess.
They want to have some of the traffic controls, knowing that BHP is coming into play now. They might have a lot of traffic that might be going through our area and they may certainly want to see that there is a lot of officers out on the road. There is a good possibility of community policing, too. They might even want to have greater control in air traffic control although they do not have a municipal or community airport, but I guess somehow, one way or another, they might find a way to see whether they will be able to see some of the activity to get going within my community regarding getting some sort of an airstrip build by various companies because they are associated with a lot of different companies. They probably might seek funding elsewhere or see whether they could take associated joint ventures with various companies and then start building their own community airports or something like that.
My most important concern was about being cautious about what we do because I think we are just giving too much power to the southern communities that are not prepared. Some of the smaller communities probably are not prepared, but most of the bigger communities are quite prepared to go. I am quite in favour of this community empowerment, but I am just trying to caution the department to see if they will be able to give too much power in a short time period because in a month, I guess, maybe be able to transfer as far as we give them a chance to get some orientation plans set for them in order to get to know what they are getting into because it is the only way we might be able to have a decent transfer program at the community level. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.