Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Municipal and Community Affairs has a lot of... Because I have the riding with the most communities, I often hear lots of concerns, especially during my last visit to the communities. They just revolve around the New Deal. The concern is that they’ve been operating for about three or four years now and they’re not really convinced that there’s enough O and M funding in there for them to run their communities. The biggest one for me is I hear consistently about the cost of street lighting. I’m not sure if it’s an arrangement with NTPC or not, but there is proof out there now
that the amount of money that’s actually funded for O and M for street lighting does not actually keep up with the actual costs. I’ve raised it during committee about when the New Deal will be assessed and re-evaluated. I think the Minister said it would be at the 10-year mark. I really think that we need an evaluation or mid-term evaluation soon to look at the O and M costs that the smaller communities’ concerns are realized or met. Perhaps someone from the department can do that.
The communities with the most concerns are communities like Wrigley, where they are currently in a co-management process. The community of Jean Marie River raised that with me, Nahanni Butte, and Trout Lake, of the smaller communities. Because of these realities, they really feel that they’re struggling to make their O and M needs met. In fact, they’re frustrated. Jean Marie River even said, take the deal back; only because they’re struggling with that. It may be a capacity issue. Has this been explained to them enough?
In some of my communities the reality, too, is that they’ve been changing management every six months. That’s not helpful at all. I believe MACA can be helpful, as well, in guiding the communities and letting them know how to best manage their communities. That’s why I feel that just because they’re changing management doesn’t mean that they have to run into financial troubles. I don’t know if all communities are using the same financial package for each community, but I believe we have to assist them more, because they are asking for assistance.
In terms of O and M and the maintenance of those communities and their assets, maybe the Minister can detail for me again what kind of, it will probably be complicated, but what is the basic formula, how was it derived. Did they use one year’s data, three years’ data, five years’ data? It sure doesn’t appear to be meeting the needs of the communities right now.
The last thing we want to do is have our communities in trouble. My communities are feeling stretched with the amount of resources that are transferred to them and they really don’t feel that it’s enough. Maybe the Minister can detail for me how the formula was reached, what kind of historical methods were used, what’s currently in place to assist communities that are feeling in trouble, and how do we best manage that. They continue to raise with me, on a monthly basis, that the street lighting costs are exorbitant.
Did the government have a different deal with the NWT Power Corporation than the communities have right now? A community like Wrigley, it’s said that I think in the line items it’s --I’m just rounding up figures here -- in round terms I think it was, like, $15,000 a month for power, but they’re actually paying $23,000 a month for the power to supply
street lighting. There seems to be a big aberration there.
Of course, that’s something in the details that when the community signed on the New Deal they can’t really see until they start experiencing it for themselves in a couple years’ worth of data. That’s a huge cost. They’re managing it. They did run into financial difficulties. They are in co-management at the community of Wrigley. They will probably be out of it in about eight months. However, just because they’re able to see things on a monthly basis, this is what they see.
For me it’s about, okay, if this is the reality, then let’s re-evaluate the New Deal as soon as we can or else re-evaluate, especially in the community of Wrigley, how they’re paying the power costs. They may even be thinking, okay, at $23,000 a month, that’s almost running the whole O and M for the NTPC for that month in the community of Wrigley. Is the payment out of line? It really has to be looked at and I urge the Minister to do what they can, not only for the community of Wrigley but all the smaller communities that are struggling to make ends meet with the O and M payments. There has to be an assessment done and I really feel it should be done sooner than later.
Just with that, if the Minister can comment on those questions I have and how we can best manage this situation.