Yes, I do.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, on my right is Debbie DeLancey, deputy minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, and on my right is Sheila Bassi-Kellett, director of corporate affairs.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the committee highlighted in its report a couple of areas of concern, and I'd just like to put out some information and time lines as to how things had evolved from a committee perspective in the area of main street paving for non-tax-based communities. During business plan review it had come up that the department was going to initiate the actions of a motion in the House. Upon further request for information, from the penof Minister Handley as Government House Leader, he forwarded information to our committee. In that information, I believe it was October, when we were given information as to what communities would be selected for the initial programs for paving for main streets. The committee was given the communities' list and maps attached. It was stated it was preliminary. The communities were Fort Resolution, Fort Liard, Fort Providence, Fort McPherson and Rae-Edzo, and that the paving style would be chipsealing. It wasn't until later on that the committee became aware that Tuktoyaktuk was on the list that was forwarded to us by the department near the end of our review of their draft main estimates. That's when it became a concern to Members. At no point during the review was the committee made aware that Cabinet had extended the mandate or the motion that was done in the House, that they extended the mandate to include other communities. The way the committee was operating was on the previous information, that it was fitting with exactly what the motion was in the House and that's the way the committee had approached it. When we received the further information of what communities would be funded during this fiscal year, we took our concerns up to the Regular Members at AOC, and a letter was sent to Cabinet as to the concerns of Regular Members about the funding going ahead for the community, which didn't fit the criteria as the committee had initially seen it.

It was after that, we were given the letter from Minister Handley that stated that in fact Cabinet had extended the program that now made the community of Tuktoyaktuk eligible for this funding. It's under the pretense, Mr. Chairman, that committee raised its concerns and put it in its report about the flow of information that we had and the understanding that committee had of the program and the criteria that was to be available. So I just wanted to put that on record so that Members and the Minister and his staff are aware from what side the committee was coming to when we reviewed the report, as well as for other Members of this House. It was an area of concern, and there still is some concern and there might be questions as we go through detail, as to what criteria, what type of crushing and other things that are going on at this point, Mr. Chairman. That would be all my general comments for now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there is obviously some need for clarification there in how the changes came into effect in regard to which communities would be eligible for the chipsealing program. Up until this fall, the plan was to follow the motion that was put forward by the recommendation of Committee of the Whole, and it was to apply to the five major communities that were identified.

However, when we took the program to FMB, we then had to justify it within the criteria that is established in the capital planning process. We had to show what it is; whether it's a political wish, whether it's a people need, whether it's related to health in order to justify the expenditures and the program. We indicated to FMB that this was a people need, as well as health related, because it was the only form of dust control the department has now. That's because we have to phase out calcium chloride in the near future. At the present time, we fund some communities, or almost all communities in the Territories, small ones, with some calcium chloride funding. Whether they use it or not is up to them. We don't ask them to account for this expenditure. Some communities use it, some don't, for calcium chloride.

The results of that was that FMB said that it has to then apply to all those communities where we could possibly reach, either through the winter road as well as highways or even barging if necessary. But it would have to be in relation to Department of Transportation activities, otherwise we couldn't afford to do it. We initially put forward a figure of roughly $3 million to do those jobs. To stay within that figure over five years was going to be very, very challenging if we went and implemented a program without taking into consideration Transportation equipment and their activities.

Therefore, we came back. We had to take this all back to the drawing board with Transportation, and asked Transportation where their equipment would be and what activities they'd be undertaking. Tuk got into the picture because Transportation was undertaking a major crushing project in Tuk, which was related to resurfacing of the runway. This was already a program underway. As a matter of fact, I believe Tuk was the last of four communities that Transportation was resurfacing their runway. Then the crusher would move out of the Beaufort. This is Transportation's own crusher.

Because Transportation's crushing program was taking place, we then wanted to take advantage of the program and the crushing. I'm sure Members know that Tuk has no gravel. The closest crushable gravel is about a 60-mile haul, and that's what makes it very expensive. The type of crusher Transportation uses is not the normal type for highway crushing.

With those things in mind, we had to draw up a new schedule and Tuk was shown, when we passed out the early draft of the communities that we would be applying the program to the first year, it was shown as Tuk receiving approximately $600,000 for crushing and stock piling. I think there's some misunderstanding here that Tuk was going to get paving in the first year as well. There's no possibility Tuk would get paving at the same time as the crushing and stock piling, because Transportation doesn't have a chipsealer in Tuk. It would have to wait. As a matter of fact, on the sheet that we presented, Tuk was in the years 2006-2007, I believe, for chipsealing. That's the way it was laid out.

Even though the committee wrote to us and asked us to reconsider this, it was not possible for us to redo Tuk at a later date because once the crusher moves out of Tuk, the option to haul crush material into Tuk brings the price from up to $80 a metre. That would be from hauling from Inuvik because that's the only option we have. That's one of the major factors driving why Tuk was chosen the first year, and why we're doing the project in the first year in Tuk.

Mr. Chairman, I took a revised schedule to FMB for the crushing program just recently, and I believe it's available if the committee would like to see the rescheduling of the communities and which communities have already had chipsealing done. We have four communities now that have chipsealing; two of them under Transportation programs, one under their own initiative, and one as a pilot project for MACA. The one MACA did as a pilot project was while Transportation was chipsealing the road into Detah, we asked that they chipseal the main street into Detah as a pilot project because the program was already taking place there. I'm quite happy to say we managed to do it at a very reasonable rate of $12,500 -- something like that -- to chipseal that short stretch of street in Detah.

What we're now doing is working with the communities to see what they have to have in place in order to maintain the chipseal without damaging it through maintenance of roads. So we're working with the communities now to see what they have to do in order to maintain the chipseal.

For your information, Mr. Chairman, Fort Liard chipsealed their own road -- I believe it was somewhere around early fall, around Labour Day, something like that -- at their own cost, because there was a chipsealing program on the highway at that time. They took on the cost themselves and they chipsealed their own road.

Rae and the Hay River Reserve are chipsealed under Transportation programs, because they're considered part of the highway. So MACA doesn't have to make any expenditures in those communities at this time. We may have to respond in some form to Fort Liard requesting reimbursement now that the program is in place, but we can deal with that in future. I hope I clarified how we got Tuk into this picture, Mr. Chairman. But like I said, I have amended schedules if the committee wants to see them.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm glad the Minister is taking some time to lay out some of the initiatives to deal with the dust problem in our communities. It's been an ongoing problem. We've tried to address it with the calcium, however, the funding there is only for one street or the main street. It's never enough and it's going to continue to be a problem. So I'm hoping that chipseal will be something that will be eventually put on all the streets in the communities.

But as a Member of the GED, I'd like to see the amended schedule because I'm not clear from the information we got as to what order we'll be progressing in. I was not clear that Tuk was going to be part of the program. My understanding was that Fort Providence was going to do prep work this year, so that's the information I relayed. Now if that's changed, I'd certainly like to get a copy of that. I think it will be useful information, and we could avoid some of the confusion if we could see what the formula is for determining what communities are going to get chipsealed in what order over the next years. It's something that all the small communities need and all the small communities want. So we need to be able to explain to them the process of qualifying.

The Minister has indicated that Tuk is going to have a lot of gravel crushing that has to be done. We've been in that situation for many, many years, and we've had to utilize rejected gravel, gravel that didn't qualify as road-worthy, or gravel good enough to use on a road because of the mixture of dirt in it. If you walk in some of these smaller communities, you'll see a lot of the communities are in that situation. There's so much mud in the mixing of the gravel, it's really not a gravel. We couldn't consider it a gravel. It sticks to your tires and sticks to your shoes. It has really caused a lot of problems, because we need to use that gravel source for house pads, driveways, and a lot of the airports need it. So I'm glad, that at least in my riding, we've seen some crushing done over this last while and we'll do alright for awhile. However, I'm really concerned that it has to be an ongoing process. There has to be a system in place that addresses it. We can't be left in a situation where we don't have the material to do anymore development.

I was also quite happy to see that there was an increase to the smaller communities in terms of budgeted expenditures. But if you look at it and start to calculate it out, a lot of it is for water and sewer. That really points that there is a need out there that hasn't been addressed for some time. Water and sewer, water quality is something that we have to, on an ongoing basis, make sure that it's looked after. I think there's been some neglect in the last number of years, and we're really trying to play catch-up now. So even though it looks like a lot more money flowing to the smaller communities, it's something that maybe should have been done some time ago.

I also want to voice my concern regarding emergency measures in the small communities. Emergency measures is something that is the responsibility of this government, of MACA, and I'm not satisfied that all the communities have emergency measures plans in place and they're all familiar and updated to be utilized in time of tragedy or emergency. All the communities that I represent are on the highway system. In most cases, there's only one road leading out of the community. If it was for some reason blocked by a vehicle accident or a chemical tanker truck or fire, we have to be satisfied that we have alternate routes.

We also need to ensure that we have some type of transportation system so we could utilize helicopters, we could utilize an aircraft landing in the community. In three of the communities that I represent, three out of the four, there is no real system in place. We had the Minister come down, and I certainly appreciate his consideration to look at widening a portion of the road in Kakisa so that in the event of an emergency, we could land a plane there. Other than that, we don't have anywhere that we could bring in a helicopter. We probably could use the ball diamond in most cases, but there should be a system in place that everyone is satisfied with.

We've raised it as part of a theme day and part of AOC and also GED, our dissatisfaction with the system for capital planning that was adopted a couple years ago. For two or three years now we've been utilizing this system, and for a number of years there's really been no attention paid to what was needed and required in communities because they couldn't meet the criteria. So I think we saw a lot of projects that should have been in place go by the wayside. To add and compound the problem, in the smaller communities at the regional level there's always quite a few vacancies and we've had to live with that for quite a number of years now, and it has resulted in a lot of discussion at the community level with the councils to have capital planning. That's something that this government has to ensure is being done on an ongoing basis. I know when I was in the position of mayor, there was really nobody in the system. We requested it for four years in a row to have somebody come in and meet with us and review the capital planning process and what was in the capital plan, and we couldn't attract anybody because there was nobody. There were so many vacancies at the regional level. I mentioned today a concern that was raised to me by the Association of Municipalities. It has also been raised to me by individual communities in my riding, that there is a lot of activity happening in the area of self-government, land claims, land management, land withdrawals and that whole area of aboriginal groups taking control over some of their decision-making. There are communities that are kind of left out of the loop. At some of the meetings that I've had, it's been raised to me that there is a lack of information flowing. I think this government has to have somebody in place or an avenue where we can bring people into the communities to explain what is happening in their immediate area, especially in communities that have a small aboriginal population.

A couple more things. I'm still concerned that as part of the emergency measures, that we don't have community protection plans for forest fires. What was once considered to be a comprehensive community protection plan to deal with forest fires, fire breaks, fire guards, tree thinning and all that was going to take place, it seems to be something that has been rejected or gone by the wayside. When community protection plans are discussed now, we have one lonely renewable resources officer that takes a couple pictures and says, well, maybe we should trim a few branches off that tree. We no longer have a community comprehensive plan.

If you look at some of the communities in my riding, they've been targeted as high risk. They have a lot of flammable material that surrounds the community. Even some of the ferry crossings; at Dory Point there are houses there, there's a government base there. It's all huge timber in there that is very high risk.

I was asked to commend the government that they did a good job at looking at including some recreation facilities, such as swimming pools. A lot of the communities are built and constructed that are situated along the banks of rivers and lakes. The riverside pool system or the lakeside pool program doesn't work. We've had them in two of the communities, in Fort Providence and on the Hay River Reserve. Very few of the children want to go to swim. Even the ones who want to, their parents won't let them. It's dangerous, it's not a healthy situation, and there's real concern. So I'm very happy that under MACA, as part of the capital planning, it qualifies. I think we have to ensure that we put proper, safe pools in all of the communities in the North. I've seen some of the pools that the communities have tried to build themselves. They're very unsafe and the whole structure is probably questionable.

I also want to mention, Mr. Chairman, that there are a number of communities that we consider communities that are not recognized by this government: Ndilo, West Point, and even the reserve. For a lot of funding capital projects that they should qualify for they don't get. They're really left out in the cold on their own because of their situation, because of their location. In many instances, the communities that I refer to are older and have been located there longer than the newer, modern community that has grown right alongside of it. Yet these are the ones that are ignored. They don't get a core fund of any kind in a lot of cases, and they're really suffering. We should have been looking at a mechanism to include them. It's very difficult, especially for the community of the Hay River Reserve in my riding, to talk about a number of different things -- sewage lagoons and all these things -- because we have a larger, modern community right next door.

So I wanted to raise those things and raise my concerns with them, and ask if the Minister would respond to some of these issues. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, first of all in an effort to respond here, I could pass out copies of this revised implementation schedule for main street chipsealing in non-tax-based communities. I believe I may have enough copies here. But it would give an indication of where we're planning to work within the next five years.

One important point I should point out, Mr. Chairman, is that the department doesn't think that this program is going to stop all of a sudden with the change of government or whatever, because we don't really have another option for dust control. If we phase out calcium chloride like we're supposed to, we will have to come up with another form. This is basically what we're replacing.

The schedule you're going to see does not include a certain number of communities in the first five years, because those are communities that would take an extreme effort on the part of either Transportation's and the department in order to reach them. They're neither on the barge system or, like for instance Colville Lake, although it's on the winter road now and some of the communities in the North Slave, in order to bring chipsealing into those communities it would require tying up the equipment for a year mainly because the chipsealing can only be done with a certain temperature, and that's in the middle of the summer when it's the hottest time. So we don't really have a choice of when we can do this work. It has to be done at certain times and at a certain temperature. That's one of the governing factors.

The other factors, like I said earlier, would rely on Transportation taking on some other programs within the area in order to bring down the cost. For instance, if they have road resurfacing or runway resurfacing, that then gives us opportunity for crush material. We have to have crush material of a certain size to use. We just can't use just ordinary pit run or material that's bigger than 16 millimeters. That's one of the governing factors.

If you look at the layout, the old schedule we had showed only $800,000 for the first year, and a carry over in the next year of $200,000, which is 2004-2005. This schedule is showing it all in the years it's supposed to happen. So we've done another thing, and that's in an effort to assure that there's some work in every riding. We've included the Sahtu for $100,000 worth of crush material in 2003-2004 for stockpiling. We increased Fort McPherson's stock piling and crush by $100,000 and we've reduced Tuktoyaktuk by $50,000. The engineers tell us that there's really no other option. We can't reduce that anymore or the project won't be viable. So that's what we've done there.But what we've done; if you have the old schedule, you can see the differences that Fort McPherson was reduced in 2004-2005, and we've included Good Hope for crush and stockpile in the second 2004-2005, $315,000. Another change in the first year, and I believe it's in the second year as well, is that we've included the engineering costs in those areas where there are still engineering needs. Like assessment and design, Fort Providence shows $20,000 for engineering. But they're probably the first community that's going to be chipsealed under this program, in 2005-2006. The chipsealing further down in the Mackenzie Delta and Beaufort won't happen until 2006-2007.

So this allows the communities to prepare themselves for chipsealing because in some communities where it will be necessary to establish by-laws to prevent the use of lugs and chains on chipseal roads, most communities don't have that by-law right now. It will also allow them time to have training for the use of chipseal and the repairing of chipseal.

Now if I may respond to another point the Member brought up, and that's the requirement for gravel in the communities. MACA and Public Works are both working out a program, and we're doing an assessment in the communities. I believe some of the communities have already been assessed as to what their needs are in relation to gravel. But once we've done that, we can put together a program that we can take to FMB for supplying gravel to those communities that need it.

In relation to emergency measures plan, I can commit to having the emergency measures people draw up a schedule that would show which communities they'll be doing to assess, and I suppose doing an inspection in the communities as to what they have for emergency measures plan, and work with the community to put together what their future needs are. I think that's a good idea that the Member put forward.

The capital planning process; I believe both myself and the Finance Minister responded to questions in the House recently as to the capital planning process that we're planning to undertake now in regards to consultations with communities and then coming up with a final report on the capital planning process, and involve the communities in this capital planning process. I fully agree with the Member that in the past we had a system where communities got used to departments coming in and going over their capital plan needs on a yearly basis. That was replaced with MACA being responsible to go to all the communities on behalf of all the departments, but it didn't quite work out. So I agree with the Member, that we have to take a different process. I believe the Finance Minister outlined that process. It will involve communities sitting down with the department and identifying their needs.

In regards to staff vacancies in the South Mackenzie, I'm happy to say that we're in the process of advertising for a senior position of regional superintendent for the South Slave. We've now repositioned the person who was in the South Slave. We've put them in the North Slave, so we're advertising now for a position in the South Slave. I don't have the information when this closes. I'm told it closes tomorrow, so we should be making a decision shortly.

In regard to the NWTAC's request for funding, I believe I responded to that in the House today, but the department has been working with the agency for over a year now on this. We definitely agree with them that there's a need for more information into the communities. The only question we had was how they were going to go about getting this. We had to have them work with and consult with Aboriginal Affairs as to how they're going to be involved at the negotiating table, if at all, what the process would be that they would use to get their information, and how do they see themselves distributing this information to the communities without upsetting Aboriginal Affairs or the aboriginal groups. So I think that process is over. I took the proposal again back to FMB for funding, and I'm hoping that this time it will be approved.

In regards to fire guards around the communities, I'm well aware that it's been a while since these fire guards have been upgraded, and I'm prepared to sit down with RWED and see what kind of program they could come up with that would have these fire guards redone around these bush communities. I don't need them in my riding, but I understand the concern of the Members. I understand from talking with the department that we've already had some talks with RWED on the fire guards.

In regards to smaller communities and their ability to receive program funding, I'm told that Ndilo, for instance, is funded by Indian Affairs and they have a deal with the city as to services for that particular community, although it's not recognized as a community as such. I think, Mr. Chairman, if I may, I will ask my deputy if she could elaborate just a little on the small communities.

Mr. Chairman, I think we pointed out quite clearly that we turned this program over to Transportation to have a look to see where they could see chipsealing take place in communities at the same time they're doing their own projects. We're not asking them to change their schedules or anything. But I agree with the Member, that if there is chipsealing outside of Fort Resolution and we're not chipsealing the community, I will certainly get back to Transportation to see whether or not this would have been possible. I don't know the answer to that at this time.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Member asked how we could possibly address the needs of all the communities, including Lutselk'e. I guess the best way to answer the question would have been if we had enough funding to do the job, we could do it. We are really limited in our ability by the amount of funding we have for this particular program. That's why we stressed that it's so important that we work with Transportation. I think the standing committee and Committee of the Whole recognized this because the motion directed us to work with Transportation to do the job. Like I said, I am not trying to change Transportation's schedule for their airport resurfacing or highway jobs, but that's where we are limited, our ability to chipseal communities. If there was a program in Lutselk'e where there was stockpiling, crushing and chipsealing, then it could be done in the short-term and we could bring it in again by barge and out again by barge. That is something we can look at, but at this point in time all I can do is take that proposal to Transportation and see what the cost would be.

I think one of the things the government will be looking at from this program is that it's so effective in dust control and it's so popular that we are going to have to look at putting more money towards it. That's about all we can look at for addressing all the communities. I have communities in my own riding that are in the same situation as you. They are never going to see a chipsealing over there. On the other hand, we have to keep certain things in mind as far as trying to prioritize these things. It can't be all based on politics. There has to be some practical decisions here. How many vehicles are in the community? It's one thing to say that all communities have dust, but we should look at how many vehicles are in the communities and the populations of the communities. As a matter of fact, I think that's one of the conditions that was recently put on this program was it had to have a population of 500 or more. This department has made an effort to make the supply to those communities even though they are smaller than 500, but are still in need, like the Member said. Everyone has a need to control dust. We don't disagree with that.

So all I can suggest is that we can keep working on the program to improve the program, but we are limited in our ability to actually see where the chipsealing goes because we don't have the equipment. The equipment is with Transportation. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.