Caroline Cochrane

That is correct, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In my opinion, I try to be as fair as possible within reason. When I look at the whole of the Northwest Territories, and I see that within five regions, we are only providing support to three regions, then yes, the system is broken. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Currently, the maintenance, the repair, and the replacement of roads actually is the responsibility of the Hamlet of Aklavik. The Department of Municipal and Community Affairs supports the community government to prepare capital plans, and within those capital plans, we identify climate change as an area of concern, and then the community actually decides what they're going to do. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will make that commitment. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That actually is very difficult to break down. We have a number of different programs that provide supports. Some of them are under $5,000, some of them are over $5,000, some of them are school-based supports, some are where people can even apply for support, so it's really hard to actually put a number down on how many supports we will actually be providing in the year when the pots are so varied and so many and people can apply for so many different amounts. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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.