Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the New Deal has been an initiative we have embarked on since the beginning of this 15th Assembly, this new government. It's really proven to be popular and successful in providing new dollars to communities. As part of the whole strategy, we needed to review a number of funding programs that we had and change the way we provided capital to the communities. Up to that point, there was no capital provided to the larger centres and we have incorporated, we reviewed the Water and Sewer Subsidy Program and changed the formula. We have looked at the way things were calculated historically. It was very difficult for communities to understand and there had been a lot of interference or political decisions that allowed some communities to have more money put into the pot really not following the formula. We have also looked at operations and maintenance and had to review that. Some of these programs, Mr. Speaker, hadn't been reviewed since '96 when the O and M was reviewed or the water and sewer was reviewed. So we decided to create a new formula that people could understand, people would be able to follow.
It's really fairly simple. We have costs that are fixed costs and we looked at each community and have been able to calculate each community's infrastructure or the water treatment plants, the sewage lagoons and everything else and were able to cost factor into a formula that is set and calculated even before one drop of water is produced. Then we factored into the variable costs, where we looked at the fuel, is it a blended system, is it trucked water, and have been able to calculate the variable costs. We factored in also the ability to raise revenues and applied that. This is a new system where people will understand. I think there are about four communities that have seen reductions.
In the case of Hay River, there was an allocation outside of the Water and Sewer Subsidy Program that was to the tune of $200,000 that we could not justify and we have removed it.
We've also been increasing this program. If you look at the dollars involved, Mr. Speaker, from the time this government came into play, we've increased the funding to the Town of Hay River by 91 percent. So we have increased one area, but we've decreased in the water/sewer subsidy. The program dollars are flexible enough so that money can be used from one pot to compensate for the other. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.