Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the steering committee that I chair is the committee of deputies and senior bureaucrats. We coordinate, in addition to the community empowerment initiative, the community wellness initiative, income support reform and the other related initiatives that are currently either under way or in development.
In addition to the steering committee, there have been a number of working groups established to do the preparatory work for community empowerment. Part of this involves looking at all of the programs and services currently delivered by our government at the community level, and identifying those programs and services that would be appropriate to transfer to communities and those which would require the GNWT to retain some level of interest or involvement in. That work is not yet completed, it is under way and we expect to have it completed within the month.
We report on a regular basis to the Cabinet Committee for Social Programs and Community Empowerment. We take our progress reports to that Cabinet committee and they provide us with ongoing direction. We are aiming to bring an action plan to Cabinet by the middle of June, with the component identified; the tools that have currently been underdeveloped and are being developed right now include a community planning process that would be tailored to the needs of communities of various sizes and degrees of capability. It's very much modeled on the kind of community leaders' conference that the city of Yellowknife undertook, where the city council worked with community leaders from other groups; for example, voluntary organizations and non-profit groups. Leaders from those other types of organizations work together with city councillors. That's the kind of model that we really want to encourage at the community level and to facilitate as one where the elected officials work with other leaders in the community to identify community needs and priorities. From them would flow the assessment of the community's capacity to undertake those priorities it has identified. That was referred to earlier by the Minister.
So we are extremely busy at the present time trying to get these tools developed, so that what we take out to the communities will really be useful for them. In addition, a full communication strategy is being developed to ensure that communities have information about what the community empowerment opportunities might be for them. We're very much looking forward to getting into a dialogue with communities so that we can make sure that what we're providing in the action plan is really going to meet their needs.
I would be pleased to provide more information if the Member wishes, but I'll stop there for now. Thank you very much.