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.

Thank you. Madam Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This has been mentioned many times. It started in September, 1996, during our business plans for 1997, review of 1997-98. In November, 1996, Kivalliq leaders in Baker Lake raised the Keewatin pilot project as a project to be considered as part of the infrastructure transfer initiative, instead of each community. Each community was presented with community transfer initiatives. Each community knew about that.

When they got together as leaders, they thought this was a better way of doing business. The Member is trying to make an assumption this just came out of the blue just recently. When the mayors were here, they were getting frustrated with technical questions that were being asked of them. It was a very important situation to the mayors because they know what they want to do. It is not something that is being forced upon them. It is something that they have come up with at the leadership meeting of 1996, at the Baker Lake meeting. I am going to ask my deputy minister to elaborate some more on this.

Thank you, Madam. Deputy minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I think one of the issues that the pilot project is trying to address is, how you can make infrastructure transfers work in small communities and in a small region. One of the early concerns that mayors and SAOs in the Keewatin raised was that there would not be enough economies of scale in a small community to make the infrastructure transfer work.

They felt it would be important for them to be working together. Because their region is small and they do have a tradition of meeting on a regular basis and working together, they were very comfortable with a regional approach. The regional approach has been there almost from day one. It was never intended that it be six separate approaches or eight separate approaches in the Keewatin. The desire to work on this together was there right from the beginning. It was presented to Cabinet if my memory serves me correctly, as a regional block funding approach and not intended to be a separate community-by-community approach. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. Community operations. Mr. Picco.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am not making assumptions out of the blue for the Minister. I am not asking you questions, Madam Minister, to upset you, to cause you any concern. I am asking you those questions because I want to know the answers. There has been no proposal put on the table. There are several questions outstanding. It might be the best proposal in the world. You do not know that until you have the facts.

I was not at the Baker Lake meeting as you know in 1996, why would I have been there? How would I have known that? All I can go by is the information provided to me from going through the Hansards, from going through the transcripts. The only thing that was involved in the Keewatin transfer that was talked about in any committee was the airport transfer, not this block funding agreement that the deputy minister just spoke about.

I have specific questions on it and I am not here to get into a debate on where I am coming up with this and how in the committee meeting, no one other than you or the mayors had an opportunity to comment on questions of a technical nature. I am not prepared to go and debate that, because I did not ask any questions of a technical nature. I do not like that connotation, but I will follow up on my questions. I do not think that is fair, Mr. Chairman.

My follow-up question is, would legislation be required to enable the region to assume the functions or would some other legal mechanism be available? Thank you.

Thank you. We will try to speak through the Chair. Madam Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We did a full briefing to the Baffin leadership meeting on this project in August, where the Infrastructure Committee Member was there and also Levi Barnabas, Jack Anawak and also Jose Kusugak, the NTI group and the QIA were also all there. In regard to the legislation, I will ask my deputy minister to answer that. Thank you.

Thank you. Madam Ballantyne.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we have been consulting with the Department of Justice, as we have with all departments, in the development of the proposal outlined and to date we have not had any legislative concerns raised by the department. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Picco.

Thank you. There are a couple of questions on the transfer itself. We talked earlier about the profound change and I would like to ask some specific questions on that. Would there be job losses or transfers as a result of this proposal or would there be actual new job creation? Would that be some type of new level of bureaucracy at a regional level with the transfer?

Thank you, Madam Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know my deputy minister has been working a lot on this, so she knows the details more than I do. I will ask her to answer that question. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Ballantyne.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No job losses are contemplated. It is certainly quite possible there would be some transfers of positions from GNWT departments to the Keewatin Communities Association if that ends up being the regional group. It would be anticipated that there also might be more community level jobs created because communities would now have the scope of work that would allow them to employ, for example, a full time maintainer. You need a certain number of buildings to take care of in a community before it makes sense to have a resident plumber or resident oil burner mechanic.

Right now in the smaller communities, because of the way each of the buildings is taken care of by a separate agency, often those services are provided by a regional group. By pulling all of this together at the local level there starts to be some local opportunities for employment that do not exist today. Certainly we would hope to see more local jobs created as a result of something like the Keewatin pilot. Thank you.

Thank you. The time has run out for Mr. Picco, at this time. On the list I have Mr. Steen on government operations. Mr. Steen.

Thank you. Mr. Christensen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For partial authority agreements, the contract, the project manager is the community, as well as for full project authority agreements. There is a much heavier direct involvement by Public Works than our department on a project management team. In the partial authority agreement approach, the responsibility in each case for obtaining all the necessary permits rests with the community as the project manager. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. Mr. Steen.

Thank you. Madam Minister. Mr. Christensen.