Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, we can commit to actually starting to track the time that it takes for us to reach out to the communities and actually have their community plans. However, there may be extenuating circumstances. It is not always the responsibility of the person providing support. Sometimes there are community issues that make delays in the planning, but we will track what the reasons are and how long it takes.

Like I said, we are looking at, once we get a little bit of time on our hands, actually looking at the whole department and seeing if there is a restructuring that needs to be...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Like I stated, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs spends a lot of time with communities to develop their community plans. We try to give them recommendations. If they are, for example, building a fire hall that is too big or an arena that is too big, when they have the infrastructure in place, we talk to them about their plans in regard to what it will cost to run it.

There are certain categories that they are allowed to spend their monies on to take care of their needs. Although some community governments, in all honesty, are not using their funding...

At this point, yes, the lottery funding will be used to pay for lottery staffing; however, this will be reviewed with the Department of Finance to ensure that it is the best action moving forward.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, this money is allocated to each community, so all of the communities have actually got their allocations. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Currently, the federal funding is on a yearly basis, but they have shown a commitment and voiced a commitment to actually work further in this area towards supporting Aboriginal self-governance. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The community planner position was actually responsible for assisting in the development of the community plans, but, with the New Deal, actually we have changed it so that communities actually develop their own plans now and we allow them to hire their own planners within the new funding arrangement that we have. Then, at headquarters, we still have two positions. We have a planner and a technician. Like I say, these two positions that are currently here will take over the overlap, and it is not as indepth anymore. Now that we are not doing actual community plans and we are allowing the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The operation of the arena if a community sees fit, that that is what they decide to operate is found on page 330, and it is under grants, contributions and transfers, the $81,081,000. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So for the program itself small communities are considered a population under 100,000 people. So currently MACA is not considering population in our figures. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The two recommendations that at this point the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs are not implementing are the second recommendation. The report recommended that the department include all of its programs in the Sport, Recreation and Physical Activity Policy, including youth and volunteers. The second recommendation that we, to date, have not implemented is recommendation number 15. The report recommended that the department establish a separate lottery commission to oversee the Western Canada Lottery program. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes. So it will be the six tax-based communities. I'm going to run them off: Yellowknife, Hay River, Fort Simpson, Fort Smith, Norman Wells, and Inuvik. Thank you, Mr. Chair.