Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Accountability is a big concern of mine here in the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs. The department is committed to attempt to provide quantifiable measurements or results, information, in the upcoming business plans. This Session is to look at this year's main estimates, to conclude what we started in March.
We are embarking on another process immediately, which is next year's business plan. We are also working on a financial reporting framework for communities. As I indicated in my opening remarks, quite a lot of the dollars that we get, about $41 million of our budget, have been transferred to the communities this year, of the $58 million dollars that we are requesting. This, in turn, is managed and administered by the municipal governments. The municipal governments have been very accountable, in most cases. There are some financial problems in some of the communities, but we are working with them to try to resolve the problems that they have. There, again, I am ultimately accountable for those dollars that go to the communities. Therefore, we, as a department, identify that there are problems in our system on how to deal with the accountability with communities.
I think we are starting a process with the SAOs. I mentioned to the honourable Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes earlier on that there was an initial meeting with the SAOs. We plan to have another meeting with the SAOs for the non-tax-based municipalities. It is coordination. It is cooperation with the municipalities to see how we can work.
With the NWTAM, the department had come out with a financial review. It is a joint effort on their part who are actually administering the dollars on behalf of the people that elect them in the communities in which they are accountable to. The accountability of this department is via the municipalities. We have to work with them to make sure that we come to some arrangement that is acceptable to everyone and ultimately will work. We still have some way to go to put a system in place. Thank you.