Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, under community empowerment, the Keewatin pilot project would be a fundamental change or a profound change in the way this government does business. On April 2, 1997, the Cabinet directed MACA to investigate the potential for a comprehensive community empowerment transfer of authority to Keewatin communities for community infrastructure and capital expenditures on a pilot basis. I understood that was to individual Keewatin communities, not to a regional body.
Then, eight months later, on November 12th, at the Kivalliq leadership meeting in Whale Cove, they passed a motion supporting that in principle. The transfer of all Keewatin infrastructure, complete control of all GNWT capital funding designated for the Keewatin region and all GNWT operations and maintenance funding that can be attributed either directly or indirectly to the management of infrastructure in the Keewatin region. That was the motion.
The Kivalliq leadership also resolved, Mr. Chairman, to have a committee of key senior GNWT and Kivalliq leadership officials be established with sufficient financial and human resources to prepare a comprehensive transfer proposal and that the committee complete its comprehensive proposal not later than January 15, 1998.
Last week, during the first week in February, we met with the mayors and the proposal has not begun yet. MACA has explained the initiative as a pilot project, that would allow the capital process to be managed closer to the communities so that the communities could have more ownership of the decisions about project management and can better link project management with training opportunities. Everyone would agree with that principle. The communities would still have to abide by the department's policies, standards and criteria. There was no mention of operations and maintenance on
any of the other information items that we received.
The Minister for MACA and the department officials met with the Standing Committee on Infrastructure on the review of the 1998-99 main estimates and that was on November 26th. It was the first opportunity we had to address the Keewatin pilot project in committee.
Having gone back through all committee transcripts, we cannot find any mention of the Keewatin pilot project for capital and infrastructure operations and maintenance block funding, other than that date, or during that review in November. There are several questions around this change. First, it is a Cabinet direction as we know on April 2, 1997. The Cabinet directed MACA to look into this transfer to communities.
The first question would be, when did the change from the Cabinet direction of April 2, 1997 to Keewatin communities come about to be including a regional body, instead of each individual community? That would be my first question, Mr. Chairman.