Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Minister.

Mr. Chairman, we have asked the committee to outline some of the options and some of the recommendations and we're hoping that this document will include all of that.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Villeneuve.

We're on 4-31, right?

Page 4-31, lands administration.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With lands administration, just looking at the operations budget of $2.5 million, I think that the lands administration here in the NWT is probably one of the more important sections of this whole department. I don't know why there's not more money put into the administration of land, because a lot of the issues that we deal with in this government come

directly from issues surrounding land tenure or squatters or land claims or land transfers or government transfers, resource revenue sharing, devolution, everything. It all has to do with land. So I don't know why land administration in this government is given such a small budget with such a large mandate. I know their mandate is the Territorial Lands Act and the PATA and whatnot.

I would have liked to see more money being put into lands administration because I know you get a lot of feedback from communities saying it takes months or it takes a year to get a lease for property in the NWT. That is just way too long; if it's a federal government lease, it will take even longer. It has to go to the feds, to the GNWT, or to whoever is applying for the lease and depending on whose land it is. With property tax issues now that have become community issues, I think the lands administration is really lacking the resources and the manpower to efficiently manage the land, because there is so much of it and there are so many issues that are directly related to land.

That said, with the whole department's view of land administration; the budget is really not going up too significantly. By the looks of it, it looks like it dropped.

I just wanted to let the Minister know that, in their review of the business plans, the next go-around, we really have to put more money and more dollars into lands administration in this government. The staff that are there now, I know, are just flooded with requests and proposals and trying to straighten out this land mismanagement of the NWT. I just wanted to put that point forward to the Minister for consideration. Maybe he can offer some insight or some recommendations that the department is going to undertake in the future for land admin. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Minister.

Mr. Chairman, I totally agree. The Member is quite right. It is a busy area. We had a number of initiatives that we had planned to do this year that we are really struggling to find resources to deal with. As part of our reduction process, we had to reduce the funding that was allocated for the Planning Act review. We have since been able to scrape up enough through internal resources to deal with it. We are still working really hard. We'd like to do also the Property Assessment and Taxation Act and we need resources to deal with it. It's a costly undertaking. We are well aware that it has to be reviewed but, as part of the reduction, we did have to remove these initiatives. We also had to cut two positions. So that's why there's a decrease in our budget this year and it really makes it difficult, but we have to work with what we have, in terms of resources.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know all the budget cuts are across the board in the whole government. I just feel that land administration in one area where you just can't cut and you basically have to build the capacity there. If it's not community capacity, it should be our own government capacity in that whole area of land. In places like the directorate where no one really deals directly with the people at the forefront of delivering land administration, they don't deal with constituents' direct concerns with land administration. I think that there just has to be some better prioritizing of where the cuts should go and how they should be administered.

Again, everything that we deal with in this House has some relationship to land administration, I think, and I think that Municipal and Community Affairs should really be on top of the land administration game with the federal government, with the land claims groups and with ourselves and with the constituents. They should be able to deliver land administration efficiently and effectively. If you are waiting two, three, five years for a community land transfer to go through, then there's a problem there in the administration. Something gets lost somewhere or gets bogged down by bureaucracy or something like that, then the whole lands administration is ineffective and inefficient and I think it really has to be revisited. I just wanted to make that point. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Minister. Okay. We're on page 4-31, activity summary, lands administration, operations expenditure summary, $2.594 million.

Page 4-33, activity summary, lands administration, grants and contributions, contributions, total contributions, $300,000.

Total grants and contributions, $300,000.

Pages 4-34 and 4-35, lands administration, active positions.

Page 4-37, activity summary, sport, recreation and youth. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My questions sort of span pages 4-36 to 4-39, so I'm just going to drop them in here and I'm sure the Minister can wrap them up. Mr. Chairman, I have a school in my constituency called Mildred Hall and they are funded through the normal process; the Department of Education, and then it goes down to the next level of district education authority and then directly to the school.

The school is building a community park out of their playground and that's why I thought I would first outline I know where they would get their main funding from, but the school sees their playground as a playground for recess and coming into school and coming out of school kind of perspective. Yet, the community sees their playground as a community playground. This school is in dire need of a serious infusion of good dollars to help develop it for a community type of park, because when you travel along the city in July or you travel along the road by Mildred Hall in September or October, kids are always playing there and the kids of the city always see it as a playground. So would the Minister see this as a proper area for helping fund community playgrounds as such, helping to develop it in that context? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Minister.

Mr. Chairman, we do provide funding to the City of Yellowknife for recreation funding and I think that would be the better place to apply; through the city. Our funding is already allocated to them.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the insight the Minister has offered, but the City of Yellowknife doesn't find that relevant. Mildred Hall is funded through the district education authority and the district education authority is then subsequently funded by the Department of Education and so on. So the city doesn't find that relevant, but it's still a community park and recreation area, as I see it, in this community. This part is a draw on this whole community. In the summertime, people are playing basketball, they're getting some fresh air. People are playing baseball there. It is a community park.

Does the Minister see that this is very applicable to help further develop this recreation area for the community as a community park? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.