Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my right is Ms. Eleanor Young; she's the deputy minister for Municipal and Community Affairs. On my left is Gary Schauerte, who is the director for Corporate Affairs. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As stated earlier, yes, I had made a commitment. We will work actually with the five groups. We are working with them currently anyway, and so we will have a sit down with them and explain how this will impact and how we will cover the multisport games in the future. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It does not really fit in here, but I am okay answering it. We are working closely with the departments, across departments, the Department of Justice, Health and Social Services, Workers' Safety Compensation Commission, and Municipal and Community Affairs. Our governance team is actually on this. We are also working with the Northwest Territories Association of Communities because there may be some bylaws that will have to be developed for communities, especially if they are looking at prohibiting marijuana in their communities. So we are on top of it. We are doing our...

I am pleased to present the 2018-2019 Main Estimates for the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs. Overall, the department's estimates propose an increase of $482,000 from the 2017-2018 Main Estimates, which is a .45 per cent increase.

These estimates continue to support the Government of the Northwest Territories' objective of ensuring a strong and sustainable future for the government and its programs by managing expenditures due to limited revenue growth.

The 2018-2019 Main Estimates reflect:

a decrease of $1.5 million which was the final contribution provided to Host Society for...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, as presented in the previous year's financial mains, the next year there will be another cut, and that will be the final year of cuts to the multisport games. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We don't have that information at this time. That is one of the things we are looking at. Some of the communities actually provide that information more because they feel that they're not collecting on the fees. Other communities, for example the City of Yellowknife, actually are doing really well collecting on their fees. So we haven't been collecting them before that, and we don't even know if they've been reporting them all. So that is one of the pieces that we are looking at, how many actually will be needed, how many currently, and what's the projection of what will...

We are working diligently on trying to address it. I would like to remind everyone that we have, I believe, over 200 mandates that we are trying to address, and not very many of those mandates do not cost money. So if we are trying to address all of those hundreds of mandates, we need a lot more money than we actually have. So I am committed to try to help the communities. I think the communities understand that. We have provided increases with their operating and maintenance and their water and sewer every single year since that study was done; and as the economy turns, as we have the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Definitely not. It is not the intention for the Government of the Northwest Territories to be getting out of multisport games. We respect the games. We respect the sport and recreation associations and the services that they provide to the residents of the Northwest Territories. We are committed to maintaining the multisport games. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As per the recommendation of standing committee, we have agreed with standing committee, and the fees will cover the total cost of 911, except for, of course, the initial implementation that we are currently doing, but after it's on the ground and operating, the fees to the consumers will actually cover the cost for the provision of service. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

For this last year, actually, the proposal within the budget is a proposed $1.2 million. I do not know the exact for every year. What I do know is that we have given increases for the operation and maintenance, and we have given increases for the water and sewer. We are working with the federal government for the capital and infrastructure monies that are needed, and we work closely with each community so that they can leverage their monies that they have to actually get the federal infrastructure dollars.