Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Members for the comments. We do appreciate the comments we got on the money that we’re putting into the youth. We all agree it’s an investment in our future, and the Members of the 16
th
Legislative Assembly should
be proud of the fact that as an Assembly we put more money into youth than I think has ever gone into investing in them before. I think we should all take responsibility for that.
I feel the Members’ talk about the capacity in the communities is challenged and capacity issues in the community. Obviously we recognize that and in working with LGANT and NWTAC, we’ve been able to come up with a training plan. We have successor training. I think in a couple of the smaller communities we have folks in there that are trained to take on the responsibility. In the time I’ve been MACA Minister, the number of AGMs that I’ve gone to with NWTAC and speaking with a lot of the mayors and councillors that are there, I haven’t really heard any of them, they have some concerns but none of them have ever said we don’t want the money, we can’t handle the money, but we do need some training. They recognize that and that’s something that we’re working with them to do. I think Member Beaulieu pointed out, helping them to
access financing, we as MACA see our role now as assisting the communities, working with the communities. The ultimate decision, obviously, is theirs and that’s the way it should be, but we will work with them and help them to do borrowing bylaws as we’ve done with a couple of communities. So far we’ve worked with them and they’ve been able to access financing to put a project in place earlier and then just finance it over a few years.
I think as Mr. Krutko or one of the other Members -- I think it might have been Mr. Menicoche -- had talked about was the firefighting and we have identified $300,000 in this particular budget to do the assessments, do some training with the local fire departments, do the assessments on their equipment, and that will go a long way in assisting the community if they have to go out and purchase the equipment. We’re working with them.
The base-plus funding level that we use we feel is the fairest one for the communities. We have one of our smallest communities with 42 people and one of our larger communities... Well, Yellowknife being our largest community. We think it’s a fairly fair process to give them a base plus the number of people they have in the community. That works well for how we allocate our funding and sometimes there’s an argument we use with Canada that we would like to see a base-plus funding when they allocate funding to all the jurisdictions across the country.
We talk about the different investments that are made, and a lot of the investments that you see in the communities now, the communities make the investment that reflects their priorities. We see a few communities that have gone ahead and done youth centres because it was one of their priorities. They’re identifying their priorities, they’re coming up with their infrastructure plans and capital plans for future years.
One of the things that I’ve been most impressed with in the time I’ve been the MACA Minister is the amount of money that each community has invested into the youth through their Building Canada Plan or through the community capacity money that was out a few years ago. We’ve seen a huge investment by the community into the youth.
Mr. Yakeleya’s points on Colville Lake, if communities wanted facilities in the school or the health centre upgraded, they would have to talk to the appropriate departments. We see our role as if they’re talking a sewage lagoon, we would be able to assist them with the planning for that.
Mr. Menicoche, not enough money is what I wrote down. He’s not listening. He didn’t hear me. Anyway, Mr. Menicoche had talked about the amount of money that had been allocated to the communities. I can assure the Members of this House that we are doing an evaluation of the New
Deal in 2011-2012 and we’re also doing an evaluation of the O and M funding and this may go a long way in determining the amount of funding that we give out in the future.
I will leave my comments at that and I look forward to getting to the clause by clause or line by line.