Thank you, Mr. Chair. In regard to the area of Municipal and Community Affairs, I think we have to realize that some communities are still challenged by the decision to allow communities to take on more programs and responsibilities. Communities are still challenged by way of capacity issues regardless if it’s a lack of professional staff such as SAOs, financial officers, and even, in some cases, in regard to maintenance. People that they require to implement their responsibilities and obligations under the community empowerment that’s taken place by transferring those program responsibilities. But again, I think that the way, regardless if it’s the gas tax money or looking at the way it’s been allocated based on base plus funding in regard to per capita, but for the smaller communities that have small populations it means well but it doesn’t really give them the capacity they need to take on, regardless if you’re dealing with a maintenance issue such as road dust control or dealing with the area of water and sewer. But having that extra funding to assist them to really implement the obligations they’d like to carry out, but more importantly, with the illustration in regard to the communities to basically develop their own community capacity issues, but more importantly, looking at the access to the gas tax money where you had to write your energy plans and those types of initiatives. A lot of communities were not able to meet that idea where we had to bring in the Arctic Energy Alliance and other groups to assist them in regard to developing those requirements in order to fulfill the obligations under the gas tax.
Again, I think that it’s great when you have a large population base where you are receiving the benefits of the gas tax money, the area of property tax, in regard to your tax revenues, in regard to taxes from the different fees that you’re able to acquire those additional taxes, but in most communities you don’t. Without having the ideal population base, those are challenges you’re going to continue to face.
Again, the other issues dealing with high costs of operating those municipal structures in communities versus the cost of operating them in large urban centres, again, is a challenge that a lot of our communities are facing. I know one of the issues that you’ve heard time and time again is the area of the health and the well-being of communities to realistically meet or exceed the programs that you see elsewhere, regardless if it’s dealing with road maintenance, dust control, areas in regard to accessing federal money so that you’re able to deal with the area of federal regulations regardless if it’s dealing with the processing of grey water or even dealing with the potential of a carbon tax in the future, that we have to be realistic that a lot of these communities don’t have the human resource capacity to take those on. I think that we have to be realistic that the shoe doesn’t fit all, and
more importantly, the challenges are different from the large versus small rural and urban communities.
Again, I think it’s important to realize that we still have an obligation to ensure that those communities have the capacity to deliver on things that we impose on communities. Again, it’s one of those arguments going back to the 13
th
Assembly,
is offloading to communities. We’ll establish legislation here in the Legislature, but realistically trying to have that legislation implemented in all communities does not work. You have to allow some flexibility when you draft legislation to find out that you have unique circumstances where that legislation will not be able to be achieved or receive the same level of success in all communities.
Another one is in the area or firefighting and emergency measures. We all have an obligation with regards to fire suppression and that we have a trained volunteer workforce, but more importantly, be able to deal with emergencies when they come by way of having the capacity to do so. In all communities, yes, we have a volunteer fire department, but again it is a different level of fire suppression or fire response that we have in regards to communities I represent. In most cases we are finding that the community fire response is more of a go there with the volunteer firefighters and basically water down a fire, because you don’t have the capacity and you don’t have the means where you can plug into a fire hydrant or have the water capabilities to be able to really fully fight a fire with the equipment that you have. All you may have is whatever water is in the fire truck, in which you have to access water from a different source after. I think those are the type of things that we have to be realistic of, but more importantly, ensuring communities realistically have not only the equipment but the training and the resources to do what we expect them to carry out, and not fund it on a per capita basis because it does not meet the needs of communities, but more importantly the objective that we have put forward for them to achieve that.
Again in the other areas, in regards to sustainable communities, sustainable communities means more than just basically carrying out municipal programs and services but being realistic that the communities can function as a community by way of having the social economic programs and services, regardless of it is policing, nursing or looking at economic programs and services that other communities take for granted. I think in most cases you wonder why communities are struggling just to maintain staff in communities. A lot of it has to do with the well-being of those staff. You take a teacher, you take a lands officer, an SAO or finance officer, take them to a community and try to tell them once they get there, sorry, there is no nursing or policing. Excuse me, I don’t think they are going to be there too long. I think that is one of the
reasons we have such high turnovers in a lot of our communities. We as government have to ensure not only program service dollars, but ensure that the environment that those communities are operating in is also cognizant of the human resource capacity ability for communities to attract people, keep people, and also ensure that the programs and services are universal throughout the Northwest Territories so that all communities can see the benefits that flow from that.
Again, I think that this government has to find a way that communities do have the means, the financial means, but more importantly the financial ability to be able to access resources, and not to continue finding themselves in a competitive area where we are competing community against community for the same resource dollars, especially when it comes to federal infrastructure dollars or even basically having to tell them, sorry, there is only this much money, $330,000, for a particular program, then you find out after the fact that the program dollars that you are earmarking have been already expended because it is an application-based program. There has to be some way that you have dollars allocated by way of classes of communities for ensuring that there is a fair way. If you don’t have an SAO or you don’t have a community planner, or you don’t have a financial officer to assist you on pulling that paperwork together, you lose out a lot of times and a lot of opportunities surpass a lot of communities just because they don’t have the community capacity to take that on.
Again I think it is important in this Legislature that we have to get away from empowering communities but also ensure that we give them the resources and making sure that they have the support that they need to carry out their obligations and basically ensure that we are able to assist them whenever, but more importantly, find ways of taking down the red tape, taking down the barriers that are in place between small rural communities and large urban centres, because there is definitely a discretion as we can see from a lot of federal infrastructure funding that was put out there, which a lot of communities still haven’t been able to carry out the agreements that we have in place or the dollars they have accessed, because of capacity issues, contracting or whatnot. I will leave it at that and see what the responses are from the Minister.