Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to pick up on a line of discussion that Mr. Krutko was talking about in funding to the communities and some of the problems that I have experienced as a former mayor. Over the years the funding to the communities has been an issue that was raised at the association of municipalities annually. The problem that we raised with the funding is that there is no incentive there for communities to operate efficiently.
Over the years we have seen non-tax-based communities...inaudible...through a budget; all increased drastically. A couple of years ago the department looked at ways to try and alleviate that problem and indicated to the communities that they would be looking at a type of block funding, and we all welcomed that. What it came out to was a cap on the dollars for services. In a way it has helped the department in terms of holding the increases down.
I see a different solution to the problem. The way the system is set up now it does not encourage efficiency. If one community operates very efficiently and it generates a surplus at the end of the year, they are not allowed to keep it. It goes back to the government. If another community operates and spends a lot of money and runs into a deficit situation, they are bailed out. When the cap was set, there was a rating, an analysis done by the department, on all the communities in the North on the water and sewer program. The community of Fort Providence was rated number one in terms of efficiency. It was capped at a level that they were spending for that year. Other communities of the same size, the same population, were capped at a much higher level and that is the money that they operate on to this day. In a way, the community of Fort Providence was penalized for running a tight ship, for operating efficiently.
I have never been able to understand why we cannot incorporate a method of encouraging people to try to run a surplus operation. I would like the department to look at that kind of a scenario. Maybe the community is allowed to keep a percentage of the money they save. I want to ask the Minister if they have considered incorporating an incentive to run a tight ship, or balance budgets.