Madam Chairperson, this issue on the division of the MRIF is something on which I guess we could have had a lot more discussion with the NWT Association of Communities, however, the timing was really difficult. It was over the Christmas holidays and we had not anticipated that we would be signing the MRIF agreement so quickly in the new year.

When the Minister indicated who was coming north, we had some discussions with his department and it was clear that we had enough time, if we fast-tracked everything, to have an agreement put in place. We based our allocations between the tax-based and the non-tax-based communities on a document, an assessment that we had done, measuring and looking at the infrastructure deficit across the North. In that document, it indicated that there was a deficit situation in both classes of communities. It was a higher deficit situation in the non-tax-based communities.

Therefore, we used that to base our decision on how to divide the formula. There is still a considerable amount of discussion that has to take place. There is a working group that has been put together with representatives from all the tax-based municipalities to work on the division of the 45 percent of the MRIF funding. We still are not in a position to sign off on the gas tax. We are working on an agreement, we started that discussion late last week. We are hoping to have the signing take place some time in late spring.

Of course, there again, we have to have a lot more discussion. We are talking with the NWTAC and we have a working group, we also have to work with the Department of Indian Affairs, so that we can make some of these decisions. We have a lot of consulting to do and we are also working on another initiative. Through the new deal, there have been some new monies allocated in this budget to top up and increase the Community Infrastructure Program. We have carved it off from the capital planning, or the capital process that we had historically. We have made it an independent amount that communities can use and we have, for the first time this year, allocated some new resources to the tax base.

We have indicated that we have targeted $3 million per year for the tax base to use towards their capital. We realize there are capital needs in all our communities and it is difficult to really pinpoint how to allocate the money. We also, when deciding on our MRIF, had the discussion about giving a fair amount to each community and, realizing Yellowknife has a big population, we took that into consideration. At the same time, the basis of our negotiation on MRIF was to have a base amount for the communities in the Northwest Territories, and so that is not split on strictly per capita.

There is a lot of money, as indicated in my opening comments. We have seen a significant increase in our capital budget for this coming year, for the following years, for the next considerable amount of time. We have finally some resources to put towards infrastructure deficit. I am hoping it is going to be a fair situation. We are really making every attempt to have the communities decide how they want that allocated. We have working groups dealing with the tax base, with all the community representatives. I am hoping and I am very comfortable that we will work some kind of solution out, so there is deficit reduction in the infrastructure needs of the communities for the next while.