We have been very fortunate in the last number of years where we have received infrastructure money from Ottawa. We had the Building Canada Plan from a few years back that put over $245 million into the Northwest Territories. A lot of that money flowed to the communities. The communities actually did a very good job with the projects. Through the New Building Canada Plan, we had $258 million booked for the Northwest Territories. Out of that, $38.4 million was allocated to the communities. The rest of the money actually went into our transportation projects. We just approved bundle 2, and we have another bundle that we have to approve, and we're going to have that. We have been very fortunate that we've been able to access a lot of money from the federal government to help with our communities, and through the gas tax money, too. They changed a lot of the criteria in the gas tax funding to include more projects. I think that's where we see our communities are challenged now on the O and M side to deal with a lot of the O and M on the infrastructure money that they've been given. We’ve worked with them to allow them to use some of the CPI funding they get from Municipal and Community Affairs to help deal with some of the O and M on projects. We will continue to work with our counterparts in Ottawa, with the new federal government, and the commitments that they have made as far as infrastructure spending go, we have to hold them to that. We have to be sure that we're down there getting our share of the infrastructure dollars on a base plus basis, not a per-capita base. We'll continue to work with them and we'll keep the committee informed as to the work that we're doing.
Robert C. McLeod on Question 68-18(2): Addressing Community Infrastructure Deficits
In the Legislative Assembly on February 25th, 2016. See this statement in context.
Question 68-18(2): Addressing Community Infrastructure Deficits
Oral Questions
February 24th, 2016
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