Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a few comments, more general, on the Minister’s opening remarks for the review. I guess the one area where I have a little bit of concern is the community infrastructure funding. I know that the community infrastructure funding is scheduled for a review after five years. I don’t understand why there was no clause negotiated in there that it would be at least indexed to the cost of living and so on. From my understanding, it’s remained at $28 million, at least that particular budget, for the full five years prior to review. So I don’t know if we’re going to have a big increase of 15 percent or something like that when they review, but I would have felt that would have been better to put the escalation in there each year.
Also I wouldn’t mind to see MACA work with the Minister of infrastructure to see what is in place to replace the Canada Building Plan, if the Canada Building Plan has expired, and what is in place to replace that. I think that’s still essential that that type of money, the Building Canada Plan type of money be utilized by the municipalities and hamlets across the Territory.
I think that again, same as for the infrastructure acquisition funding, that the Gas Tax Agreement should go up also every year. I don’t know if it’s gone up in previous years but I know there is no change for this year from last year, this coming budget from this current budget.
I agree with the comments made by the previous MLA talking about the youth programs. I think that the only one we’ve actually put a lot of effort into assisting the youth... I think more should be done, but I think this is a really, really good start. I know that communities could use more infrastructure dollars. It was thanks to the money from the Canada Building Plan that we’re able to construct a youth centre in Fort Resolution. I think we’re going to see some huge results from having a youth centre. I think we’ll see very positive results with the youth coming out of Res and so on because of the youth centre, a place for the kids to go. I think anywhere they have a youth centre they see improvements overall in youth behaviour in the specific community. I think that’s something that’s positive. I think there’s a youth centre in Fort Resolution coming on-line that MACA should put some money in there to operate and put programs in, pay for youth workers and so on, so that centre becomes a viable centre to support the youth in that
community. I think the same thing should happen in Lutselk’e.
I think Lutselk’e could use a youth centre. They may have a building there. They’ve tried a couple of buildings in the community as youth centres, but I don’t think they work really well. They just have a residential place converted into a youth centre and it doesn’t really work that well, I don’t believe. Unless they actually went in there and reconstructed a building, I think that might work. In Lutselk’e the kids want to see something similar to what is being built in Fort Resolution and they’re aware of that. They’re hoping that they can ultimately get something like that. If there is no Canada Building Plan in the future, somewhere down the road they gain the support to be able to build something in Lutselk’e.
I guess that kind of leads me to my next thing on the support that the department provides to the hamlets. I would like to see more support. I feel like the money was handed over to the municipalities. Although there is a desire, no question about it, to devolve the responsibilities to the municipal councils and hamlet councils and these communities, I think that there’s still support needed, admin support, support for contracting and support for securing financing. One of the features of having a hamlet council is the ability for them to borrow money and pay back through the infrastructure funding they get in the future, whichever financial arrangements can be made. I think that this department should provide the assistance to the communities to secure financing. An example right now I’m talking about is Fort Resolution again. I know there was some issue with the streets in Lutselk’e so we can never really determine whether or not we want to put any permanent dust suppressant down; however, in Fort Resolution they’re prepared and ready to put some permanent dust suppressant down as in chipseal for the whole community. I don’t know what the total cost would be, but it’s probably greater than the amount of capital that they’re getting on an annual basis, plus that capital is probably spoken for in other projects that they wish to do. The key would be to provide them with support to secure financing. I’m not sure, I think the municipality can do that. They can probably hire their own individual financier to go out and do financing, but I think that we should be there as a government for the community to say maybe you don’t have to pay such a large amount to get a financier to come in and do the financing for you. There may be money that can be borrowed cheaper. I think with support from the government to look at those things, we can get cheaper infrastructure dollars into the community and maybe better financing arrangements. There could be low interest loans that have balloon payments and if there’s a situation set up where repaying the
finance back quicker than what is laid out in the agreement and there’s some bonuses in there, that will motivate the hamlets to pay off their infrastructure quicker. Just little things like that.
The whole idea of chipsealing the entire community of Fort Resolution I think has so many benefits to it, it’s hard to just sit here and describe all the benefits. One key factor would be just the market value of the community. Just that alone. I think once you increase the market value of the community and people take more pride in maintenance and maintaining yards and so on and so forth, actually potential to have a quasi-type market in the community which again has lots of long-term benefits. We talk about what happens when you try to deliver housing programs in non-market communities and how little motivation there is to put maintenance into your own unit because there’s essentially no market in the communities. Chipsealing roads, having people start taking care of their yards, actually begins the process of developing a market value for the community. So, in a sense, people gain equity by doing work on their own houses, they gain equity themselves. It’s a start. I think that this government should be there with the people all the way through the process when financing is needed.