Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I’ve got a few comments I want to make to the Minister and his staff.
First of all, there were a lot of tough decisions that had to be made in the area of reductions within the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs. I commend the Minister and his staff for coming up with them — I don’t agree with all of them — but I think it was a very good effort on behalf of the Minister and his staff to reach the target that was given to them. Again, I appreciate their efforts.
The big thing for me is that there’s no impact community government funding, and I think this is a key thing. Communities need that stable and secure funding in order to operate.
The one concern I do have is with the cuts to the School of Community Government. We’ve always got to keep an eye on capacity building at the community level. We need to ensure that programs and opportunities for training are available to communities that need them. I’m going to be closely following how this plays itself out. I know Aurora College is going to get involved in the delivery of some programs and some training for communities; I’m interested to see how that will work out. I think it will be successful. I do believe Aurora College should play a role in the delivery of programs and training opportunities to communities. I look forward to seeing more there.
I wanted to also thank the department for the reinstatement of the rec coordinators. It didn’t come as a recommendation, but you heard from a number of Members that that was a concern in many of our communities and the ridings we represent. I was glad to see the department took a second look at that and decided to reinstate those rec coordinators.
Many of my colleagues have talked about the necessity for this government to focus some attention on youth and the issues surrounding youth in the Northwest Territories. I know Mr. Beaulieu, Mr.
Menicoche and a number of my other
colleagues have spoken about the need to be spending more in the area of youth. It’s something that I think needs to be addressed. Perhaps it could come through strategic initiative funding. We need to earmark some money to get it in on the ground level so we are having a positive impact on the youth in our communities.
There are some communities out there, Mr. Chairman, that are absolutely struggling with youth gangs, drugs, alcohol, and youths roaming the streets late at night and causing fires and vandalism. We really need to reach out to those kids and give them something positive in their lives. It’s going to take spending some money to do that. I
think we have to come up with a game plan to address that, and I think it should happen through the strategic initiative funding. As money becomes available, we should try to coordinate that. I look forward to the Minister and his staff working with our committee and other Regular Members to ensure we do serve the youth of the Northwest Territories to the best of our ability.
The other thing I wanted to mention while I’ve got the floor, Mr.
Chairman, is the community
emergency management coordinator. I’m having some difficulty with that reduction. We all know full well that disasters take place. There was a flood in Hay River, a flood in Aklavik a couple of years ago. We need to make sure that when disaster strikes, communities have somebody to fall back on. They need to have that peace of mind. To me, that’s what it is. It’s peace of mind for communities to know there’s somebody who’s going to pay attention. We should all be paying attention, but there’s somebody there who’s going to walk them through things, who’s going to be there to take them hand in hand and walk them through the process and get them the help they need. Again, I’m not quite sure about the reduction in the community emergency management coordinator position. That’s something we’ll be discussing a little bit later, Mr. Chairman.
I just wanted to leave off by thanking the Minister and his officials — I think MACA — and also the Minister of Public Works. He’s done a good job at managing both of those departments.