Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I guess as being a Member of the Legislative Assembly for as long as I have, the capital planning process has always drawn attention from Members of the Assembly about the selection process; what gets approved, what gets deferred, what project seems to move up on the order paper in a sense.
It has been recognized and there have been a couple of attempts to try to address those concerns. The real difficulty we have found around capital programs began in the mid-1990s when the government was faced with a huge deficit situation. Large reductions were made, a majority of those happened in the capital planning area and it was recognized at that time that making these reductions in the capital infrastructure side of the equation was not going to be a sustainable process, that we would have to re-evaluate our position and look at what needs to be done in those communities. Unfortunately, as that time has occurred, many projects have been put on hold, have been put further down the capital plan list. As the nature of the projects that were on the list were becoming more and more critical, it became very difficult.
That is why we, as the Financial Management Board, have accepted the work that has been done by Municipal and Community Affairs and the Association of Communities in the area of a new deal for community governments. That is a significant change from how we do business. In fact, as I stated in the budget address, we are looking to go down this and looking to support the communities in taking on more of this responsibility of what projects get identified, what projects should move ahead. We are working with Municipal and Community Affairs to go through that phase. It won't be this year, but this is the year that Municipal and Community Affairs now has the authority to begin implementation of the new deal in working with community governments to ensure that they have the ability to -- those that want it -- take on that capital planning process and become directly involved in what they see as priorities in their communities.
In fact, we are supporting that to the point of putting new dollars into the capital plan and ensuring that communities can begin to start seeing some of the long-awaited projects begin to move. I think it is, again, a very different approach, a more positive one, working with the elected leaders in communities. I agree that in previous years when a committee of government people would show up in the community and say what is the wish of the community in these areas, and met with officials and identified some projects, those would get brought back.
MACA would then have to compete with every other department about the small and shrinking pool of funds to fund our infrastructure in the Northwest Territories. We are now in a position, and if we continue to operate as we
are and hold to the fiscal responsibility policy that we are going to accept as part of this budget exercise, we will be able to see community government identify the projects that they want. There will be more dollars added to that side of the equation, where they can start to see some of the fruits of the labour, in a sense, of their work from a community end and see some of these facilities begin to be built.
Of course, with working with the federal government we have been able to identify more dollars, as well. We are looking at about $25 million per year now that will be identified for community infrastructure. That is a significant amount, and through this exercise, when you look at the capital acquisition plan, be able to clearly identify that this is going to be a line item now as we go forward. Thank you.