Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think, first of all, we should be clear on who has cut funding to Volunteer NWT. We never did provide any core funding to Volunteer NWT. We had an arrangement with the federal government and Volunteer NWT to be partners on a number of initiatives. The core funding came through the federal government’s funding sources. A couple of years ago that funding lapsed and was not going to be renewed. Our investment in Volunteer NWT was on specific small initiatives.

The over-a-billion-dollar deficit I mentioned didn’t include the Deh Cho bridge or the Mackenzie Valley road. I would commit to the Members, and I think all my committee colleagues would commit, that we would share the information with the Regular Members on where we plan to go and the decisions we’re moving toward as the information comes in. Through ITI or with our work with the FMB we will commit to doing that and provide it to the committee and keep them updated.

Mr. Speaker, the Member knows full well that’s a very difficult area to measure. We will do some analysis, but whether or not we can measure the out-migration and take our best guess — I don’t know if we can go that far. We will do the analysis; that’s what we’re embarking on right now, and we will have ITI do some of that work.

We certainly concur with the Member’s recommendations. We intend to look at all the information provided up to now, and a number of us would agree; we’ve looked at this a number of times now. However, we have to face the reality that there is a cry out there to deal with this issue again. There are a number of companies and organizations that don’t feel it’s time to do this, but we have to review all the information — review and hear what people have to say. We have to share it with the committee and provide all that feedback to our own infrastructure committee to look at and make the final...

Mr. Speaker, I’m sure the aboriginal governments would certainly let us know if they perceived this to be a watering down of their rights. Actually, I will do further exploration on it. There’s no intention to step away from any of the agreements or responsibilities. That information has yet to be compiled.

I think we’ve been doing quite a bit of that over the last couple of years as we have undertaken the New Deal initiative. We would certainly be happy to share our information with the Member. If there is anything he feels we’ve missed, we certainly can look at providing that information. It’s difficult to say that we would embark on another complete review of all the communities at this point. It’s something I would hesitate to do.

Historically, a number of governments have worked on improving the standard of living in the communities and the programs to the community governments. I can recall being involved in a committee in the 15th Assembly, the Committee on Non-Tax-Based Community Affairs, and we made several recommendations at that time. Whenever we work with the communities to develop formulas, we take into consideration the unique circumstances that face, especially, the smaller communities. Our O&M formulas include the northern cost index. We have a commitment to review programs on a five-year basis. We certainly...

Mr. Speaker, our fiscal reality, of course, is driving this. We have a huge infrastructure deficit. I think at last count, general estimations were well over $1 billion. As Members look at our capital budget of $140-some million, along with carry-over debt, it comes out to $200 million. It’s going to be tough to deal with that infrastructure. We have to do our business more efficiently. We have to have checks and balances in our capital process. BIP seems to have caught everybody’s eye and ear. I think we have to really look at what we’re planning to do. The Premier said fairly clearly in his...

Thank you. That is a very good question and a difficult one to answer. I guess it would depend on how much consultation is going to be required. Our target, from our committee, is to have a lot of these things come into play next year. We wanted to have some very good discussion with the committee about our recommendations, and we actually had hoped we would have the possibility of agreement to move our capital-approval process —that has been mentioned by the Premier — to the fall, which would allow us to start planning approval of capital projects in our fall session rather than in February...

Mr. Speaker, I haven’t personally spoken to any of the associations. ITI has talked to a couple of organizations. The Premier has also, I believe, had some feedback from organizations and businesses. It was mentioned in the previous address, and it’s something we feel we need to do. We need to visit, at this point, the way we’re conducting business. It’s really providing a lot of challenges. In our infrastructure committee we have provided, I think, 14 recommendations. This one’s getting a lot of attention.

Having said that, we have to recognize that just about 80 per cent of our tenders that...