Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The department is undertaking a municipal financing review in collaboration with the NWT Association of Municipalities. One of the objectives of the review is to look at any of the inequities communities feel there are in our municipal funding provisions. As a result of that review, we expect there will be some recommendations coming forward that the department will be able to act on to address certain issues.
One of the issues which has been identified does relate to the contracting of services within a community and how we fund communities. In the case of Rae-Edzo, it is my understanding that we do, in fact, provide a full fleet of mobile equipment to the community as provided by our mobile equipment program, and we fund Rae-Edzo consistently with other communities. We do believe though that there are certain unique features of the community of Rae-Edzo that may not be properly accounted for.
Our staff is meeting with the hamlet and has been meeting with the hamlet. As we mentioned yesterday in the Assembly, we have undertaken to take stock of the situation and see if there is a need for some interim funding to the communities to deal with the particular circumstances in the short run. In the long run, our plan would be to address the concerns in a more fundamental way through some amendments to our funding provisions that would come out of the municipal financing agreement. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.