Thank you. Madam Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I said before, we want the communities to be successful in the transfers. If we feel that the communities are not succeeding, then we are there to monitor them. We will monitor them during and after the transfers. We are there as resources and to assist them in any way so that they are successful. Thank you.

Thank you. Final supplementary, Mr. Ootes.

I hate to give special privilege to Members, but I will allow you one more. Madam Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can the Member please clarify his question by giving an example? Thank you.

Thank you. I guess I will give you one extra point because you have to clarify the question. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you. The honourable Minister, Madame Thompson.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have not transferred any airports yet to the communities, as I said earlier. We are doing the agreements now. Of course, they would have to comply with the federal standards for the airports and we would be monitoring them after the transfers. We have not done the transfers yet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. Final supplementary, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you. Madam Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will ask Vern Christensen to answer the question. Thank you.

Thank you. The assistant deputy minister, Mr. Christensen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The transfer agreements for community infrastructure will involve the transfer of ownership of the assets where the territorial

government does not see any territorial interest. If there is a concern by the territorial government that incentives need to be there or assurances need to be in place to make sure that there is not any incremental costs to government, by virtue of a decision made by the community government to sell or lease a particular asset once it is transferred to the community. Those types of concerns need to be accommodated in transfer agreements. Part of the community empowerment initiative is to transfer assets and authorities to community governments, so they can manage their own situation in the way they think is most economical and efficient and effective for the delivery of municipal services. There is a wide range of management opportunity going to community governments and how they manage their assets. Conceivably, in some instances, it may mean selling an asset or perhaps leasing an asset, rather than building an asset or leasing it from private parties. There is a wide range of management discretion going to communities in the asset transfer process. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Community development. I have Mr. Steen and Mr. Picco. Mr. Steen.

Thank you. The honourable Minister, Madame Thompson.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will ask Mrs. Ballantyne to give the Member the detail on that.

Madam Ballantyne.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the municipal financing review is another joint venture between the NWT Association of Municipalities, the NWT Association of Municipal Administrators and the department. We are currently working on terms of reference for that review with all of those partners. We will be establishing a working and steering committee, very similar to what we did with the review of municipal legislation.

We think it is very important to have senior administrative officers, people who actually do work with the finances on a day-to-day basis, involved in that review. We expect to get the review under way once session is concluded and we are probably looking at having our terms of references nailed down by April 1st and then this will be ready to launch. In terms of how long it takes, as we are developing the terms of references, there are a number of areas and issues that have been identified by these different partners. They are very similar to the issues that Members are identifying today, what is working and what is not working with the way we currently fund communities.

I expect that at the earliest we would probably be looking at reporting back in the fall. We initially thought we could do this much faster, but as we are getting into it there are a number of concerns that are being raised by communities and by Members and we will want to make sure we have sufficient time to address them all and come back to the Minister with recommendations for changing the way we finance community governments. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Steen.