Thank you, Mr. Chair. It’s really good to see that the regional recreation coordinator positions will be maintained in the communities.

I see that the School of Community Government is taking job cuts. For myself, I don’t really agree with that in regard to the positions that are so helpful to the smaller communities. Working with some of the people who are affected, I think it’s a great loss for this government and for MACA. They do a good job, and I hope they will be able to reshuffle them in the mix of jobs with the government.

In regard to youth services, the youth are our future. We are depending so much on them. We are not going to be around here forever. For the smaller communities, the youth program with the

youth centres and stuff like that, it’s all good, and I’m happy for the funding. The youth are our future for the Northwest Territories, and we have to support them. If that means a little extra money in regard to different sporting under MACA — the Aboriginal Sport Circle, Arctic Winter Games — I have no problem with that, nor will the Minister, I hope.

In regard to the shoreline erosion in my community of Tuk, at the RCMP point they have to be able to finish that, because every year the ocean is rising, like my colleague Mr. Krutko says. You see it when you get in the community. You get three- or four-foot waves coming into the main harbour or the community where it once was sheltered, but now it’s not. There are about 500 or 600 feet there that have to be completed. I look forward to working with the Minister of MACA on trying to get this resolved and taking him on a visit to my communities in Nunakput.

With the water treatment plants it’s good to see that we do have a new water treatment plant in the community of Tuk coming this year and that Sachs Harbour’s water treatment plant is up and running. Water has always been a big worry for the community of Tuk. This year they fell short, to 17 feet when we needed 19.6 feet. So everybody’s been on the water slowdown. Being springtime, having children digging in the mud, having fun — you can’t. You’ve just got to say: You can’t do that. No water. Go wash in the ocean.

It’s really serious in regard to the water treatment — not only the water but the water refill in the community. It should be done a lot earlier. MACA has always been good in regard to the Beaufort-Delta with the regional supervisor. He’s really good to work with, and for any questions you do have, he’s always there — and Ms. DeLancey as well.

Other than that, that’s all I have to say right now.

Thank you,

Mr. Jacobson. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to do some repeating here, but I’m not going to apologize for it. I’ll start off with — no surprise — a real need for some added support to the volunteer sector, the non-profit sector. I’ll be asking questions about that and seeking some intelligent short-term responses on that.

I also want to say that “emergency planning coordinator” will come up in my comments, for the same reasons we’ve already heard. In a longer term planning sense I see a major role for MACA in the community-adaptation plans to climate change. I suppose we need to look no further than yesterday’s news when we learned about the loss

of bridges and roads in Pangnirtung, Qikiqtaaluk, and the complete and totally unexpected draining of a lake in the northeast U.S., due to high floods that soon came up and a drainage channel that drained the entire lake. These are things we know are going to happen. I was a little bit disappointed. I haven’t gone through the complete statement again, but I didn’t see much on this at all in the Minister’s statement. I’ll be raising this in the details.

Chipsealing. I want to add my voice to emphasizing the need and the role for Municipal and Community Affairs to be an enabler and a facilitator for helping communities take advantage of nearby infrastructure projects to get some chipsealing done within the communities themselves for the benefits that those bring, especially for small, non-tax-based communities such as N’dilo and Dettah.

I want to also put in a strong word for programs that support our youth, help develop their potential in all ways. I know there’s been some recovery of effort in that direction, and I see this as a good place to invest. I’m sure we’ll be talking about that with the new initiatives.

Under the New Deal I am aware of the community energy plans and capital plans and the integrated community-sustainability planning. I attended some early workshops on that as a representative of Whati and Ecology North. I was disappointed in those processes, in them not connecting the dots between things. I don’t think communities are still very aware of what’s coming down the pipe in terms of things like climate change. Certainly they’re getting tune-ups in the way of energy costs and so on. Again, if we can really get that going and initiate it, I think there are some gains to be had.

I’ll just mention another discomfort I had. I’ve seen many things like this in governments over the years — not just here but in northern North America, where I have had experience — of jumping into something in a big way as opposed to building methodically and gradually. So I’m a little bit nervous.

Again, I’m a little bit uncomfortable with the term “off-loading,” but this transfer or devolution of a massive amount of responsibilities to our small communities, as opposed to a methodical or decade-long program or something…. The core there is the need to develop community capacities. On that, I know it’s a big hit for the Community Development Fund, and I support the ability to do community finances. I know there’s a huge role for community government there, the School of Community Government. I appreciate that, but there are still some major challenges. We can all think of some very specific examples where communities are very challenged. I just want to say I hope there’s a real sensitivity on that. I’m certain

there must be a strategy within the department, but it makes me nervous when I see, at one time, handing over big responsibilities and at the same time cutting back on support for community capacity building. I’ll leave it at that.

Thank you,

Mr. Bromley. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair. I thought

maybe you were going to give up on me.

I will try to carry on from where I left off yesterday. I think I was talking about the voluntary sector initiatives and the loss of $10,000, which had been earmarked for the voluntary sector and is no longer part of the strategic initiative. I have to add my voice to Mr. Bromley’s and others’ who’ve said that we need to support the voluntary sector. It has a huge impact on all of our residents.

The NWT has the second-highest rate of both formal and informal volunteering, and I think that’s something that needs to be taken into consideration. Another statistic is that half of NWT residents who are 15 years of age or older volunteer in one way or another, and it’s a job that improves one’s quality of life simply because you’re giving back to the community. I would encourage not just MACA — and I think I started on this yesterday — but throughout the government that we look at volunteerism, the voluntary sector, what they do for us, and determine an across-the-board initiative that will prop up our voluntary sector. I would hope we could find $50,000 in this year’s budget to give to Volunteer NWT so they can continue. They certainly do good work, and they are in touch with every community in the Territories.

I’d like to touch on the New Deal and the transfers of responsibility to communities. I approve of that strategy, but I am concerned. I think I mentioned this before. I am concerned about the capacity of communities to handle the responsibilities to deal with capital projects, to deal with the finances that are going to be involved with larger sums of money and so on. I hope that MACA is monitoring what communities are doing, how they are doing — whether they are struggling or they’re in trouble. It goes to the School of Community Government as well, where we need to make sure that every community in the Territories has the capacity to deal with these large responsibilities we are giving to them. I’m not so sure that’s happening. Some communities are doing quite well, but others, I think, need a lot more support. Kind of along the same lines is the lot of the community development coordinators. I’m not too sure what that job is….

Are there any more general comments? Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Chairman. I consider the Department of MACA to be a key department in the Government of the Northwest Territories. A very important aspect of our work as the Government of the Northwest Territories is assisting communities to build up their infrastructure, their roads, other assets and so on. So MACA with their New Deal has devolved that responsibility to the communities. I think it’s a good way to go. I haven’t heard any complaints from either of my two communities on the lack of support for them to develop a plan, although I haven’t seen the development of a plan from the two communities. I am sure that if either of those two communities had any problems in developing capital plans for themselves, it would be no problem for the department to assist the communities.

I guess the one factor that is going to be difficult to get around, aside from what I spoke of earlier on ownership and so on, will likely be that the communities will not be able to do long-term planning now. Although long-term planning would be possible, it would be difficult.

I don’t know how we’re able to get around that factor. Even though the GNWT itself as a whole gets its money on an annual basis — the budget’s voted in here on an annual basis — the GNWT is able to fairly accurately allocate a five-year plan. Again, I don’t know the details; I’m just looking at the standard pitfalls of devolving responsibilities to the community.

I’m hoping the community would be given some certainty that the budgets will stay relatively consistent over the next four or five years. I think it’s important that the communities will then develop their plans to address their needs. When the communities begin to see that the plan is in place, that the money is flowing fairly consistently within the next couple of years, and so on, they would provide more detail in their plans and with more certainty. I would say their planning could be a little bit earlier. Probably a lot of the backlog of infrastructure issues in the communities could be caught up. I think all of the communities would see improvement in their infrastructure around the community.

Another key reason for my indicating that MACA is a key department is because of their involvement with the youth. It’s not cut and dry, because MACA is not totally responsible for the youth, although the Minister is. I’m somehow hoping that there’s greater emphasis placed just on the youth budget alone, to have some staff applying some sort of constant effort into addressing the issues of the youth.

I’ve indicated in the House that I see huge, positive results of dealing with our youth today. I think we will see positive results in the communities in the future. I think that everyone who’s elected to the

House has the understanding that if we don’t address the issues with the youth, then our social costs of addressing the youth in the future…. The youth we don’t assist today could have become more productive citizens in the future, the adults who are running our communities in the future.

I’m hoping this government is the government that turns around and places more emphasis on the youth and starts to do serious things, such as getting proper recreation into the communities and making sure they’re working with the youth and that they have the youth workers in the community working with them. I think that at the end of the day, you could see positive results, such as reducing the costs toward the Department of Justice in housing young offenders in a couple of locations here in the Territories.

The healthier youth would also benefit all aspects of this government, including Health and Social Services, Education, in the income support area, the public housing area with the Housing Corporation, the home ownership area. As soon as a youth becomes an adult and becomes a productive adult who’s able to pay their own way, it’s one more family or one more person, whichever way we want to look at it, who comes off the government social system and starts to contribute their fair share to society, as ideally it should work; we all pay taxes and we all contribute to society. Then individuals who are in need, in legitimate need, are the individuals who will get assistance — people who can’t or don’t have options of working and so on.

This government has to be able to put the money in with the youth, maybe pay a little bit up front to save a lot of money down the road. It’s something I’ve advocated in the House almost since day one. That’s something that is essential and important. It’s something we shouldn’t miss the boat on. I’m not sure the government will be ready from now until March 31, 2009, to make this shift, but I’m hoping that in the budgets coming up in the near future this government is able to do that.

That’s all I have, Mr. Chair.

Thank you,

Mr. Beaulieu. General comments, Ms Bisaro.

One last point. I’ll try to get it in. I wanted to advise the department of my concern about the projected reduction to the sport and rec contributions in the next budget year. It’s over $1 million. It’s a serious concern to me that if we reduce funding to our sport and rec organizations, we’re going to lose an awful lot of what is basically free labour — the people who volunteer their time to work with our kids. It goes for the youth organizations as well. That’s my last one, and I finally got it out.

Thank you,

Ms. Bisaro. We’re done general comments.

For a response, Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the Members for their comments yesterday — comments of appreciation. We certainly welcome them, and it gives us some indication that we’re working along the lines the Members would like us to be paying attention to.

Of course, MACA has a very broad mandate, and there are a number of things we have embarked on in the last while. The biggest initiative that has taken a lot of energy and a lot of focus with our government in this department has been the New Deal. It’s been rolled out now for a short while, and it seems to be working well.

I know a lot of Members have raised concern about the smaller communities and their capacity. It’s something we’re also monitoring. We’re also working with the larger centres that have certain issues. We haven’t moved away from providing support. We don’t intend to move away; for the most part, we think things are going well. Communities are excited to be able to make decisions on their own without us interfering or having to put our stamp of approval on it. There’s a lot of work involved. There’s a lot of planning involved that communities hadn’t had to do up to now. Most of that stuff was done through our government and through this department.

The five-year plans are coming into place. There’s a lot of excitement over that, and there’s a lot of discussions happening. We have energy plans that need to be compiled. We have provided money to Arctic Energy Alliance to hire a community energy management coordinator who is working along with the communities.

Things seem to be on track. There was initially a presentation done to committee, and we had some good discussion and response about the concerns. A lot of concerns came forward. I was quite pleased we were able to compile that information and make some changes as to where we are heading.

We have a lot of concerns, as the Members do, over the issues in the area of youth. We felt that by re-profiling the positions in recreation, we could expand most of them to incorporate the responsibility for youth.

We didn’t get that same kind of sense that it was a good idea from the general public. Youth organizations felt that recreation workers, recreation development workers in the regions, should stay as they are. We heard the same kinds of comments from mostly the Members we talked to. As a result, we decided to change our approach and stay with the status quo and keep the

recreation development officers and refocus on the issue of youth.

A number of Members have raised it here today and yesterday. It is something we need to have a better approach on. We had some early discussions with the Northwest Territories Sport and Recreation Council. They are of the same opinion. I think there’s a real push from all avenues here to do something. We need, of course, to take a step back to see what that is and to see what resources we can put toward it. Hopefully, through the business planning we’ll have a better approach to deal with some of these issues. We still have significant investment through some of the departments, and there are a number of other departments that have also provided programs for youth.

There are issues around water that have been raised also — the reservoirs. In an attempt to look at the issue and meet the national standards, we have been looking at and upgrading water plants and, in a lot of cases, replacing them over the last five or six years now. I think we’ve almost dealt with every community that had issues. There are some that will be replaced this coming year. There are still four that were kind of dropped off the plan as we moved our capital to the communities. However, now with the Building Canada Fund, and if we can get the dollars approved, we anticipate that we’ll be able to deal with some of the last remaining four water plants, and that includes the two that were mentioned by the MLA for Nahendeh.

Mr. Ramsay had raised the issue about making tough decisions to reach our targets. It’s a very tough exercise, as everybody in this House knows, to look at reductions or re-profiling dollars.

We had, I think, a really tough challenge in front of us, and I was quite proud that our staff was able to deal with it. It was a very trying exercise, as most of our dollars flow to the communities — 80 per cent of our money goes to the communities. We have a lot of statutory obligations to meet, and we also had made some commitments through the New Deal that we had to support.

We have received the recommendations from the committee, and it recommended reintroducing a couple of the community development officers. We are looking at ways we can put that into the program and maximize our usage of those two positions.

We have, as Members know, reduced our School of Community Government staff from ten down to six. With those six positions, we have to focus our programs to the community governments and leave some of the other programs we were providing in the area of administration to other agencies and organizations such as Arctic College and others.

We would like, however, to use the two positions we’ve had for community development and combine them with the School of Community Government, which would bring our staff in that organization up to eight. At the same time, we would reclassify four of those eight to have additional responsibilities that would combine community development responsibilities and School of Community Government responsibilities and put those into the regions. That would leave us with four positions in Yellowknife and one in each of the regional centres of Inuvik, Norman Wells, Hay River and Fort Simpson. We feel that the community development officers — the new positions…. I don't know if we have reached an agreement as to what we're going to call them, but for the time being we're calling them community capacity development coordinators. They would have the responsibility of delivering training and also the community-development support the communities need.

The issue of volunteers has come up a number of times from the Yellowknife MLAs. Volunteer NWT, of course, has decided to close their doors. They were an agency that really worked well with us, as they were a point of contact. They were, of course, of good value. However, with the loss of the funding from the federal government, it was just financially impossible for them to continue. It’s a loss to us in the Northwest Territories. We need to find a way to deal with that. There are a number of initiatives that we had committed to support, and we’d like to do that. It was really tough to find any dollars internally, at a time we are reducing our budget, to incorporate a new program that we didn’t have historically. We didn’t get any new monies through the new initiatives for this except for a small amount of $10,000. Volunteer NWT had indicated to our staff that they needed, I think it was…. Well, they needed from us at least $130,000. They needed a lot more to operate. I think it was, overall, $250,000 or something closer to that amount. It was quite a gap from what we had to invest.

We still continue to provide support to volunteer initiatives internally. We still have a number of things we will continue to provide. We still have program dollars that can be applied for. Last year we had $20,000, and I think only $2,000 of that was applied for and utilized.

There is, as the Member for Tu Nedhe raised, still a lot of work we need to do with the band communities — the band governments and the communities that are classified as settlements. Right now the situation is that they can’t own property, and that is an issue for us as we move forward with the New Deal. We have been meeting with the settlements, and we have been meeting with the band councils. I think we have another one this coming week. We’ll have some in the immediate future. We’ve come together and looked

at options we can utilize. We still need to explore those further. We would like the band governments and the settlements to be on par with other communities, to be able to take advantage of the New Deal. As they are not in the position to own property, that requires us to hold it for them and also requires us to be part of the process. They need our agreement to make the necessary investment in capital, for sure.

We have been working with sport and rec over the years to look at the gym teachers and how we can incorporate them as part of our sport programs. We did have programs to provide some opportunity for the gym teachers to get further training. That is not something we can continue to provide.

There is still a desire from many of the sports organizations to take a step back and have all the organizations and the Sport and Rec Council review the mandate and review the games — the multi-sport games such as Arctic Winter Games, the Canada Games and those kind of events — and see if we are all in agreement on where we want to go next. We’d like to be able to get together and develop a strategic plan that would incorporate.... My own assessment is that we’re all looking toward putting more focus on communities.

I think a lot of the issues that were raised today and yesterday are very similar. I think the issue Mr. Krutko raised is something that needs some attention from this government. There are a number of communities in the Northwest Territories — I think it’s four; it may be five — that don’t have an easily accessible source of gravel. We need to work with the other departments to be able to do that.

We have combined, and provide on a regular basis, the gravel strategy that allows all the departments to work together — Public Works is the lead — to assess what the need is in the community and to work with Transportation or whoever so that if there’s going to be a crusher in the vicinity, there will be enough support for the crusher to allow every government department, including community governments, to purchase their gravel. The gravel resources are now flowing to the community as part of their revenues, and they can certainly take advantage of that. We just need to make sure the communities are in the loop, that they know when the crushers will be in the area or when there is a gravel-crushing program in the region.

There is something new, I guess, just recently. The federal program for disaster financial assistance has changed its rules a little bit to allow not only for repair of disaster areas but an allowance for mitigation. We’ll certainly check to see if that will provide any new dollars to the community of Aklavik and others that have been affected by floods and other disasters.

The issue of climate change, of course, has been raised again as an issue by a number of people, and it has been raised in the House during this session. We have, as part of our Building Canada Fund, put some dollars toward research and development in this area. We also have, as I mentioned before, a community energy coordinator, who will work with the community. This is a joint initiative with DOT to help the communities do a lot better planning and investment as we move forward.

I believe that’s all the comments I have regarding the opening comments.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. General comments, Mr. Krutko.

I’d like to thank the Minister for all those commitments. I haven’t heard that in a while in this House, so it’s something to celebrate.

I was talking to a gentleman who was originally from Europe in regard to asphalt. With asphalt, basically you can haul it over a long distance, up to four or five hours, before it will set. I know that in Inuvik they are producing asphalt for the expansion in the Inuvik area. I’m wondering: has the department ever looked at a plan to deal with the laying of asphalt? We talk about main-street chipseal. I think it’s something we have to look at.

I notice that under Transportation, Transportation wants to take on that responsibility in-house. If they’re going to take it on in-house, that means they’re going to require the appropriate equipment to lay asphalt, chipseal, whatever.

You mentioned that the Main Street Chipsealing Program, which has been in place a number of years, has been cancelled. The whole idea was that MACA was the one that basically worked with the communities to identify the dollars and that Transportation was the department that had the engineering expertise to manage the project. Is there a possibility that the department could look at some sort of territory-wide initiative that can deal with this dust-control problem in the communities, deal with the issue of accessing asphalt, chipseal or whatever where there’s already an existing operation? That alone will save money for the communities in the long run and also develop a territory-wide program that will benefit all communities.

I feel this is achievable and is something that should be seriously looked at by the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs along with the Department of Transportation. If Transportation wants that infrastructure, then Transportation can provide that service to our communities along with

the highways. I think that’s something that has to be considered.

After having that discussion with that individual at the airport, where he was mentioning that there was a certain type of asphalt you can get now that you don’t have to set right away and that you can transport over a couple of hours and it will still hold before you have to lay it, I think that’s something we should seriously consider. I know there are quite a few projects in the works. We’re looking at Highway No. 6, Highway No. 7, Highway No. 5 and work that’s going to be going on in different airports. There are projects going on in the Inuvik area, and I think that should be seriously considered by the department.

I’d like to ask the Minister if that is something he can possibly look at in light of the cancellation of the Main Street Chipsealing Program: if we can sort of enhance it and come forward with a new initiative that’s accessible to other communities throughout the Northwest Territories so we can improve the dust control in our communities.

Thank you,

Mr. Krutko. As a note, that question is probably more related to detail and, more specifically, to 4-21. However, I will get the Minister to answer the question. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the Member indicated, we did have a chipseal program. I think we did a total of seven communities over the last while with the Main Street Chipsealing Program. The program was then rolled into the capital that went into the formula.

We had done a study for all the communities in the Northwest Territories to look at different ways each community could be applying dust suppressant, and it looked at the different soil conditions. It really focused a lot on a chipseal product called DL-10, another product called EK-35, End-Dust, and calcium. I don’t believe asphalt was included.

Asphalt is a very expensive product to apply. At the time I don’t believe even Transportation was using it on their roads; they were using chipseal. It’s something that is probably fairly new if a community is utilizing it, and I would certainly talk to Transportation about the possibility of utilizing this. The DOT had delivered all our programs when we had the Main Street Chipsealing Program, so we’ll refer them to take a look at it. We as a department have not looked at using asphalt as a dust suppressant.

Thank you,

Mr. McLeod. Mr. Krutko.

Well, I think that’s something that should be looked at regardless of whether it’s asphalt or not. As long as it’s not mud, we’re okay.

I think that in a lot of communities in this day and age, a lot of the first impressions people get when they go into a lot of our communities are of the amount of dust or mud they have to walk through. That’s the impression they leave those communities with. I think this is an opportunity to bring our communities into the 20th century. I think that when

we go into other parts of the world — Africa and Latin America — most of those other countries are a lot poorer than we are in the Northwest Territories, yet they have pretty well groomed road systems. That’s something we have to seriously look at.

I’d just like to leave that with the Minister. Hopefully, we get just as good a response from the Department of Transportation when we get to them, because we don’t seem to be getting much lately.

Thank you,

Mr. Krutko. There’s no question? We’re done with general comments? What is the wish of the committee? Details?

All right. We’ll start on page 4-7. We’ll actually defer 4-7 until after consideration of the detail. So we’re on page 4-8, information item, Active Positions — By Region.

Department of Municipal and Community

Affairs, Active Positions — By Region, information item, approved.

Okay. We’re on page 4-9, information item, Active Positions — Community Allocation. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I feel it’s only fair, in the absence of my colleague here, to ask what the basis was of the decision to lay off employees.

Thank you,

Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.

Mr. Chairman, the basis to lay off positions was in the exercise to balance our budget and also to allow for some dollars to be identified so they could be re-profiled.