Thank you. Mr. O'Brien?

I can appreciate that the Minister may not have the answer to the next question, but she may, or somebody may. How many communities are, at this point in time, are close to being block funded? How many are pending that will see block funding, for example, in the next three to six months?

Thank you. Madam Minister.

Mr. Chair, I do not have that information, but I do know that there are Hamlets that are showing interest in being block funded. Thank you, Mr. Chair. But I can get the information from my Department. I know there are communities that are coming forward in regards to Territorial-wide community status. I do have the information on what has been transferred over to the communities across the Territories, but that would take a long time. I do not have that information. Sorry about that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I believe the Honourable Minister is going to be providing the information to the Honourable Member. Mr. O'Brien?

Mr. Chairman. I guess my real concern here, and I will pose it as a question, it may be taken as a comment, is that we have block funding already in place, we have pending block funding coming up in the next short while for various communities, but still we do not seem to have any guidelines in place to give some sort of protection to the small contractors, the small local contractors in the communities. That is a bit scary, and I will say that I have had a number of calls from small business people who are concerned. For example, is the almighty dollar going to be the bottom line here when it comes to awarding contracts, and so on and so forth. Because some of these small contractors cannot compete against some of the major contractors, some of the southern contractors. I just express it as a concern, that we should get all our ducks lined up before we start putting some of these initiatives in place, or we are going to find

ourselves in very, very serious trouble. Thank you.

Thank you. I believe we are getting into the area of a fair business practice. Madam Minister?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. When we do community empowerment initiatives and it starts to happen in the community, it is the community that starts initiating projects and so on. I believe the communities would be looking at the businesses that are closest to home, and they would be protected. Block funding agreements are under the same guidelines as government, and they would look after the local businesses first. Local hamlets would be more supportive of local contractors, as we know they are, and develop local preference policies, as many have already done. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Mr. O'Brien.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What mechanism, if any, do we have in place that if, this does not occur, where local contractors are not given the preference, what mechanism is in place to deal with that, to correct it?

Thank you. Madam Minister.

Mr. Chair, I am going to refer the question to the Finance Minister. It is regarding financing.

Thank you. Mr. Todd.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you Ms Thompson. Policies and procedures are going to be in place with respect to the way in which municipalities expend their funds, and in keeping with anything else that we do, if those policies and procedures are not adhered to, we would take an appropriate course of action. It could mean taking back that authority, I suppose, etc. It is still very early in the process, this evolutionary process. But the intent here is, as I know where the line of questioning is going, and I think it is a valid one. The intent here is, and the belief is, that if we transfer the money to the communities that the communities will take a closer look at ensuring that their local community investors and small businesses are, not protected, but are given equal opportunity. I think that is important, to say that.

We will be developing some guidelines that will ensure that happens and I want to ensure my colleague that his concern about the larger corporations coming in and grabbing the projects, I just do not think that it will happen. I think an example of how well it is done right now is in his own riding of Arviat, if you take a look at that project that we saw when we were in there that the last trip we made with that garage facility that has been done by your municipality and your local contractor and the twenty or thirty local guys, I would hope that would be an example and I am sure Ms. Thompson feels the same way, a very clear example of the success of community empowerment, we in fact, have built the facility which has been run by your municipality at a lower cost than what the government funded by a local contractor who is employing all kinds of local people.

That is a classic example and you are to be congratulated for that, of exactly what community empowerment is all about.

So, our intent is to take that approach, to ensure that some guidelines and procedures are in place, to ensure that kind of excellent performance that we say there can be adopted in other parts of the country. Thank you.

Thank you, I believe the communities are still a public body unless they have the authority to make a by-law in dealing with the business incentive program. Mr. O'Brien.

A final comment, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Todd, for your kind words regarding my home community of Arviat, and you are right they have done a great job on

the projects that they have taken on so far. I was not referring to Arviat but more of a general sense, the projects that have taken place so far have been on a very limited basis and I think the more we get into empowerment and the more responsibility and finances that we turn over to the communities, it is going to lend itself to a situation where we would have to be very careful to make sure that what is happening now on a small scale will continue on a larger scale, otherwise we will have a lot of small companies that are going to bite the dust. Thank you.

Thank you, general comment, Mr. Steen.

Thank you, Madam Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. What has been happening at the regional level in the regional offices is that we ave set up a committee of different department representatives so that the departments are working together and MACA is acting as a coordinator for those meetings and facilitating the meetings.

We would be monitoring the communities, we would be talking with them and the department would be involved in the monitoring process. We have at the territorial level departments working together on this initiative so that everybody is communicating with each other and at the regional level we also have a team that is working on this. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Maybe I will ask the Social Services and Justice Minister, would you be monitoring these programs? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Mr Steen.

Thank you, madam Minister.

Yes, we do. One of the comments that was brought forward from the Status of Women's meeting was that they have a mental health specialist at the regional level that would probably be tailored better if it was at the local level, if the money was transferred to the communities instead of being at a regional level, so that his salary can be split between those people. I am just trying to make a point that some of the regional staff are nor tailored enough to their local communities.

But, yes we do have sufficient staff at the regional departments. Thank you.