Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we recognize there is a concern there by many aboriginal people who are living mainly on Commissioner's land in the communities and have been assessed to pay tax based upon the assessed value of the land. People who live on IAB land, we call them lands reserved for Treaty Indians, they do not pay property taxes. While those who live on other lands, such as Commissioner's lands, are required to pay taxes because of our legislation. This legislation is the general taxation area.

I am going to be working with the Minister of Finance, who sets the tax rates, to try to develop some options which allow for trying to resolve this. Hopefully, we will have some proposals ready by the fall. We need time to look at it, and see what options are there.

The problem here is that this is our legislation that was put in place quite some time ago, and we in the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, the lands area, put an assessment on the property. The other department put a value on it and tries to collect the taxes. So there are two departments that we are dealing with. We will be working with the Department of Finance to try to come out with something by the fall. Thank you.

Yes, Thank you. In this activity, senior citizens and disabled persons. That is what this program is for. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, my understanding of this area is that it is up to the municipal governments and administration to provide their own financial administration. We encourage some common approaches. I think Accpac is a very common one. However, to get more detailed information, if the deputy minister could take over from here and give more detailed information here. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In terms of financial accounting, there are set policies for accounting guidelines, which both communities as well as government have to follow, in terms of reporting, in terms of auditing, and setting a level of bookkeeping. We encourage the use of Accpac, especially in the small to medium communities, because it is a system that is fairly standard and fairly easily learned. It is used also by many of the housing associations that also function in the communities, so there could be a lot of cross-training and development.

In terms of the training aspect, we are quite willing and go in quite often to orient new finance staff in their jobs in the communities. We encourage the larger communities in the region to assist some of the smaller ones, as well. Through our School of Community Government, we are working with the federal government, which is interested in financial training for their band staff in the communities. We are interested in the point of view of training municipal finance staff, and the Housing Corporation is doing the same with their financial people. We are working together on a common training plan and approach so we can go into the communities and train people to be basic financial accounting personnel.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The department provides assistance to the municipalities. There is assistance in the financial arrangements. It all depends on the community. Some communities need more help than others in some cases. In some cases, they may be required to have monthly financial statements. Other communities that are better positioned and have better financial administration are on a quarterly basis. They do a report. That is my understanding of how the reporting is done. To reply to the honourable Member's question more specifically, I will defer to the deputy minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps the one comment that I would like to add, in many communities we do receive reports, but sometimes they are very complex to put together. What we are trying to do is to come up with a simpler system for the communities. It is going to look at key indicators, such as cash balances, accounts payable balances, making sure they have enough funding coming in to meet their obligations, payrolls. We want to find five or six key indicators that perhaps do not put as much burden on the community, as opposed to having to close all their books and send us trial balances and those types of statements every month.

We have a number of manuals that we have been putting together. Some are more up to date than others. This particular one that we are working on is dealing with guidelines to assist the communities with their financial management. I do not have the manual here to go through in detail. I would be pleased to get a copy for the Member himself, but it speaks to broad accountability as well as trying to give the basic tools to do their jobs on an ongoing basis.