Thank you, Mr. Chair. It’s mostly due to some HELP units that we had built in Nahendeh that we have had trouble allocating and we’re just not including those in this year’s numbers because the money was spent last year. We just haven’t been able to fill some of these units. Thank you.

I wasn’t too clear of the answer. As for this year’s budget, because they had

problems last year, is that why they reduced our budget this year?

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. For clarification we’ll go to Mr. Stewart.

Thank you, Mr. Stewart. Page 5-53, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, programs and district operations. Any questions? Page 5-54, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, programs and district operations. Any questions? Being none, page 5-57, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, local housing organizations. Any questions? Page 5-58, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, local housing organizations. Any questions? Page 5-59, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, lease commitments, infrastructure. Any questions? Page 5-60, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, infrastructure investment summary. Any questions? Does the committee agree that we have concluded final consideration for the NWT Housing Corporation?

Thank you very much. I’d like to thank the Minister. I’d like to thank Mr. Stewart, Mr. Anderson, and if we can get the Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort them out of the Chamber. Thank you very much.

Committee, we’ll be continuing on with the next department, Municipal and Community Affairs. Does the Minister have any opening comments?

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

Does committee agree?

Please proceed, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to present the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs’ main estimates for the fiscal year 2012-13.

The department’s main estimates propose an operations expenditure budget of $95.5 million, an increase of $2.1 million or 2 percent from the 2011-12 Main Estimates. The increase consists primarily of $2.5 million in forced growth funding and $647,000 initiatives funding, offset by funding that is sunsetting this fiscal year.

MACA has a broad mandate, focusing on community governments but also providing a range of programs aimed at sport and recreation, youth and volunteers. Of the proposed 2012-13 budget, approximately 77 percent is provided to our key stakeholders: community governments. This includes $45.6 million to provide for community government operation and maintenance costs and $13 million to provide for water and sewer costs. MACA, with input from the NWT Association of Communities and the Local Government Administrators of the NWT, is currently undertaking reviews of both of these funding programs as a part of the New Deal review and the results of this review may result in changes to the budgets in future years.

MACA will also provide community governments with infrastructure acquisition funding of $28 million in 2012-13, comprised entirely of capital formula funding. In addition, the Gas Tax Agreement will provide community governments with funding of $15 million in 2012-13, unchanged from 2011-12.

In support of the 17th Legislative Assembly’s goals,

MACA will provide technical advice and assistance related to the implementation of integrated community sustainability plans in the areas of energy, capital, and human resources. The department will continue to implement the Public Service Capacity Initiative, and will implement an accountability framework to better support reporting requirements for public funding, and to support community governments’ ability to be accountable to their residents. MACA will also complete the Recreational Leasing Policy Framework.

Through programs such as Active After School, Get Active NWT, traditional games tours and participation in the Healthy Choices Framework, MACA will continue to support the 17th Assembly’s

goal of healthy, educated people free from poverty and its priority of supporting the health care system through preventative measures such as physical activity.

Forced growth funding accounts for $2.5 million of the year-over-year increase to MACA’s budget reflected in the 2012-13 Main Estimates. This increase is to provide grants-in-lieu payments to tax-based communities; increased operations and maintenance funding and water and sewer funding due to population growth, cost in fuel and electricity; Property Tax Revenue Grant Program increases based on the amounts collected by the Department of Finance; insurance premiums to designated authority First Nations for the assets transferred by the GNWT to the designated authorities as part of the New Deal initiative; and to provide for northern allowance adjustments arising from the Collective Agreement.

Reported results confirm more communities have accumulated surpluses, and fewer communities

have accumulated deficits. These are strong performance indicators of improved financial management, and community governments should be acknowledged for the improvements they have achieved with the support of MACA staff and through the Public Service Capacity Initiative. MACA continues to support community governments in their capacity building initiatives, and funding first approved in 2010-11 for the public service capacity is again reflected in MACA’s 2012-13 Main Estimates. There has been a great deal of work done on this program over the past year, and the input of our partners from the NWT Association of Communities, the Local Government Administrators of the NWT and the Department of Human Resources has been integral to the program design and implementation. Most of the programs under this initiative are started and the department is currently working to finalize an evaluation framework to use to measure results and to report on the program and its outcomes.

MACA is in the second year of implementing its strategic plan and will continue to report on the progress of implementation on an annual basis. Continued support of community capacity building, management initiatives, youth leadership development and healthy choices are some examples of how MCA is responding to the priorities of the 17th Assembly.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide an overview of the department’s 2012-13 Main Estimates. I look forward to discussing them with you in more detail. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Does the Minister have any witnesses he wishes to bring into the House?

Yes, I would, Mr. Chair.

Does committee agree?

Thank you. Can I get the Sergeant-at-Arms to bring our witnesses in, please?

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Would you like to take a moment to introduce your witnesses to the House, please?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me to my left Mr. Tom Williams, deputy minister of Municipal and Community Affairs; Ms. Eleanor Young, assistant deputy minister of Municipal and Community Affairs; and Mr. Gary Schauerte, director of corporate services, Municipal and Community Affairs. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. I welcome the delegation to the House today on negotiation with Municipal and Community Affairs.

We will open up our floor to general comments. Again, committee, by protocol, we have just been doing general comments and then having the Minister respond as one aggregate. I will open up the floor to general comments. Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Obviously, in my previous work when I commend the department on their sport, recreation and youth, they are doing a good job in there. The initiatives that I have seen over the last couple of years working there, and the more money that is being put towards it, is truly an investment into our future generations and into our communities, healthier and safer communities. I do see the results time and time again in the communities and by e-mails and correspondence with the youth that I used to work with.

One concern that I do have, though, is in… There are community deficits. I have spoken in the past on how we can deal with those. Sometimes it is just mismanagement. I do understand that Human Resources does have a secondment program that can be utilized with some of the communities and possibly the bands for… I’m not sure if this department promotes that or not when they go into communities where they can second, possibly get finance workers into the communities to help them get their books up to date. I know, with certain communities that I have spoken with, the frustrations that do come along with it and the frustrations I am sure that the department sees working with communities who have run deficits and trying to get themselves back in good with the books.

We have spoken about this in some instances with the ground ambulance and highway rescue services and the decreased funding that is being proposed with this department. It is something that our communities do feel needs to be addressed and taken into consideration, considering that for quite a few of our communities the only access in is sometimes by highway, such as Tsiigehtchic and, I am not sure, I think Jean Marie. I am not too sure, but there are some communities that can only be accessed by road and more in the wintertime there. I didn’t get a chance to go through it all, but just throwing out some general comments while my colleagues are getting ready here.

Something that has been brought up is the management of drinking water for my colleague in the Sahtu and things like the Peel watershed and making sure that we do adequate testing, proper testing and looking at our standards on how we collect the water samples and the returning and getting the results back to the communities so that they are able to ensure their residents that the water that they do have is adequate for drinking and that it is safe and healthy.

At this moment I don’t have any more general comments, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to touch base on those and I look forward to hearing more on how the department is working with these community deficits, the ground ambulance services and also the management of the Drinking Water Program and the testing guidelines and standards. With that, Mr. Chair, I thank the Minister and his staff for coming and meeting with us this afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Moving on, we’ll go to Ms. Bromley... Sorry, Ms. Bisaro.

---Laughter

It’s started again, Mr. Bromley. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a few comments. I will have some questions later on, but maybe the Minister will answer some of my comments taking them as questions. We’ll see.

In general, in terms of the funding we provide to our community governments, both the O and M funding and the infrastructure funding which the Minister mentions in his comments, there hasn’t been an increase in those contributions. Whether it’s operations and maintenance or whether it’s infrastructure, there hasn’t been an increase for a number of years. It’s my understanding that the department is doing an evaluation of how our community governments are funded. I want to see the report, which hopefully is coming soon and I’m hoping there is going to be an increase. Our communities are struggling with increased costs the way everybody is. As individuals we are and as a territorial government we are. So we can’t expect that they can continue to receive the same amount of funding and be able to provide all the services that we expect them to provide and that their residents expect. So I guess my concern there is when the…(inaudible)…will be done and hopefully that we’re going to have an increase in what we are funding them.

I’m really pleased to see that the public service capacity in the program in conjunction with HR is seemingly successful and that it’s continuing another year. I think it’s addressing a deficit in capacity in our community governments and this is one way I think to try and address that. Certainly, what I hear from communities is that they lack the human resource capacity to do everything that they’re being asked to do. I’m really glad to see that we’re trying to provide the training that people need and we’re also trying to make sure that the mentoring and the backfilling of positions is happening. I echo Mr. Moses’ comment about... I totally lost my thought. I echo his comment, it was a great one.

---Laughter

It was really good. He also mentioned about the funding, $200,000 sunset for ground ambulance. My understanding was that that was training money and there wasn’t a great uptake on it, but I still believe that community governments that are on the highway system are bearing costs to provide emergency services on the highway that they should not have to. They are basically outside their municipal boundaries. They are attending to emergency scenes that are outside their community, and it is a community cost which they are not being reimbursed for. I feel really strongly that we have to put something in place that allows communities to get back the cost of providing services which they are doing on behalf of GNWT.

There is a reference to an accountability framework which is either being developed or has recently come out. I’m glad to see that. I think the Minister said in a statement last week or the week before – and I will want to hear from the Minister what he means by it – something about reporting. I’ll try to find the document over suppertime. I am a little concerned about the fact that we may be requiring communities to report.

A couple of other things. This is a broken record for the Minister and some of the Members of the department, but I still fail to understand why we have as many pots of funding for youth as we do. In looking through the budget this afternoon, we have three pots on one page, we have three pots on another page. Like, oh my, do we really want to administer six different pots of funds? So, you know, please, please, please put them together. Rewrite the criteria so we can still give the money to all the people we need to give it to, but it just seems like a waste of resources, not financial but human resources, in my mind.

I’m glad to see that we’ve got some sort of a solution for the Recreational Leasing Policy. I think the Minister knows I still have concerns about whether or not enough on-the-ground work has been done, but I think there’s been a consensus reached. My understanding is we’ve had discussions with the people who have used the space. Again, I hope that in a year’s time, if we add lots this year, that in a year’s time we do an evaluation of the impact that its had on the various lakes and the people who’ve used them. I hope we do go back to the users and ask them what kind of an impact it’s had on them.

Lastly, there’s no increase in any funding for volunteers. The volunteer contributions have stayed at the same level for the last number of years. This is something that I think we as a government need to put a greater focus on. Volunteers are the backbone of what much of what our people need and provide much of the services and programs, and we do recognize them in terms of awards, but we don’t recognize them financially and give their

organizations the money they need to do a better job. So I would love to see that amount increase.

Other than that, I have nothing further. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Moving on, we’ll have Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My comments are similar to some of my colleagues who have spoken, so I won’t stay too long on them.

Mr. Chair, the Minister’s department, one of the main objectives, I believe, is to protect the consumers in our communities. I was back in Tulita and it was very disturbing to me to do business in the Northern Store and they us their LINK card in the Northern Store. If you don’t really know the complexity of the LINK card and English is your second language – and these older people just use the LINK card to get in and out of the store or check their account – the Northern Store is robbing you without a mask because of the amount of money to use your LINK card. They charge you to check it, they charge you to take money out, they charge you to pay your bill. That is unreal what the elders are paying. The Northern Store is smiling and saying, have a good day; I guess they’re going to have a good day. They’re getting a lot of money from the people. We need some understanding with the Northern Store and the use of the LINK card.

Mr. Minister, the community is being literally financially robbed by the Northern Store. You wouldn’t accept this in any other community. The community got so mad that it bought its own bank machine. The Northern Store is the only game in town using this system and they’ve got everybody by the scruff of the neck. This is our only store and you use our LINK card, use our system.

I want to ask the Minister and the staff, hopefully they will look at this situation in the small communities. This is a private industry, a private service. In our small communities we only have one store. Some have two stores, the Co-op. This is very serious for us in our communities, especially now where Tulita, Good Hope, Norman Wells is going to be very busy because of the oil and gas activities that are happening there right now. People are spending money. Money is floating around in those communities. I want to ask the Minister what type of initiatives he can look at on financial literacy, on handling these types of financial transactions with the LINK card and how they can educate the people. Like I said, a lot of my people in Tulita are probably about 85, Good Hope, older, they speak their own language. So they don’t really know much about financial stuff that’s attached to those LINK cards.

I want to ask the Minister also, with the ground ambulance, you know that Tulita and Norman Wells are going to be busy with oil and gas. Last year it

was estimated just over $70 million being spent, close to $80 million, lots of activity there. I know these ground ambulances are set for all-weather roads, but now it’s getting busier between Tulita and Norman Wells, Tulita and Wrigley, and different communities and people have been telling me they’ve been having close calls. Thank God, knock on wood there’s no serious accident. We need to ramp that up and say what type of services can we expect. Right now we don’t know. If you call somebody right now that’s on the winter road that will go and help that person, you will need the goodness of people’s heart to jump in the pickup and go on the highway. There’s no set ambulance or RCMP or health. Everybody really hasn’t been coordinated that much on the ground ambulance.

I want to ask the Minister throughout the page by page what type of coordination is he working with his colleagues on the drinking water quality, Every department does their own thing. In Fort Good Hope this came up. MACA’s doing one, Health is doing one, ENR is doing one. Everybody’s doing their own part on ensuring that the water is safe, the testing is proper and that they are properly testing for the chemicals. They don’t do all the testing. Is the Minister going to come forward with some kind of coordinated process? This is what we’re doing with all the departments, just like they had the social programs coordinating committee, so they cannot coordinate what everybody else is doing.

Ms. Bisaro talked about the human capacity and I think MACA is doing a good job in that area. The Minister got a smile out of me here. I want to thank you. The School of Community Government is doing very good. I’ve seen people in my communities and regions who have taken this and they said they’re doing well. I want to thank the Minister for that and I could continue to support you on this initiative.

I want to ask the Minister on the New Deal in the communities. Are you helping the communities implement the New Deal and to fully implement it to its capacity on the New Deal? I know the Minister of housing talked about the IAB lots. I know MACA is involved with the federal IAB lots. There have been some people in my region that have been saying that this is Indian Affairs’ lot, why is MACA taking over? Who gave them authority? It becomes a collective property issue of rent and who pays the taxes and all that stuff. Some people still firmly believe that these lots that were given to them by the band, that these are their lots. Why is the territorial government, through MACA, taking these lots away from them? There is some confusion there, some difficulty. In and around Good Hope especially. That’s where a lot of people still say that these lots belong to them and that they are band lots, so to speak. I guess that’s some work that we have to do.

I’ve supported and continue to support the initiatives with the youth, the different games that they play, and the ones that are getting some good airtime now are the traditional games in our small communities. Especially with the hand games that are becoming more and more popular amongst other traditional games in the Northwest Territories. I’m starting to see that. I want to see how we can continue to support the traditional games.

Ms. Bisaro talked about the voluntary sector and their importance to our communities. We certainly appreciate the voluntary sector for coming out. Be it the Arctic Winter Games or any kind of games, you see in the regions all the volunteers that come out to support the children in the community. I guess I want to see continued strength in those areas.

The Municipal and Community Affairs do a lot of funding to the communities. I think the majority of their funding goes directly to the communities. I wish other departments would follow your lead so they could give the powers to the community. That’s how it should be, with the support of the departments to the communities.

I just want to say that I appreciate that process there and I will have other questions for the Minister as we go through page by page.