Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there is, and has been, a lot of progress in the area of securing new dollars for the communities in the last couple of years. We have the Municipal Rural Infrastructure Program where we secured $16 million for the communities to deal with infrastructure mostly in the area of water and sewer. This money is considered one-time and we would like, of course, to see that continue. We'll have more discussion on that with the new government at the provincial and territorial Ministers' meetings.
The gas tax is a very welcome amount of money of $37.5 million that is committed for a five-year period. The unknown portion, I guess, is that there was also some commitment or discussion around the money that would flow through the gas tax program after the five-year period was up, and that was supposed to be ongoing at $15 million a year and we have to follow up to see how secure that is. We will be doing that as we move forward and have our first opportunity to discuss it with the Minister.
The land tax to the communities is something that was agreed upon in this House to transfer over and we have been doing that. This is our second year.
The community public infrastructure funding, which was historically around $17 million, only earmarked for the non-tax-based communities, has been brought up to $28
million a year and is now available to the non-tax-based and the tax-based. This is the first year that we will be providing money to the tax-based municipalities.
The Northern Strategy money of $35 million is, of course, one-time funding that can be drawn down over a three-year period. So there is quite a significant amount of money that has been flowing to us as a government and we were, in turn, transferring it over to the communities. Most of it is ongoing except for the Northern Strategy, and we have to confirm whether the gas tax commitment is going to be something that will stay, and also we'd like to have further discussions on the MRIF.