Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to reassure the Member that I do have a heart.

---Laughter

I also want to point out that the letter that was drafted to the community of Nahanni Butte was drafted before we had approval for additional dollars to put towards our capital plan. So now that circumstances have changed, we have to look at our criteria and we have to be able to consult with the community. So I would like to request that the Members bear with us until we develop a plan of how we are going to expend that money. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am assuming the need he’s talking about is the gymnasium in Nahanni Butte.

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Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of need across the board. We have to recognize that there is still considerable demand for investment in our water and sewer programs. We have had, in the last while, guidelines set with the federal government as to how we are going to deal with water, how we are going to deal with waste water. We have to make sure we can invest in those things. Some of the dollars that are flowing forward from the federal government come with criteria attached to where...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have been focused on the youth in terms of our initiatives over the last while; we will continue to do so. I certainly will heed to the direction provided by the Members over the recreation facility issue in the smaller communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we have been working hard to accommodate some of the needs of our youth. We have been doing a lot of planning. We have been able to convince our Cabinet, our Financial Management Board, that we need more dollars in terms of infrastructure and where we are looking at some flexibility so that some of this money can be used towards recreation. We’ve also been establishing a program called the Community Initiatives Program, where there is $1 million there that communities have been tapping into for baseball diamonds, youth centres and soccer fields, so that they are not out there...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, certainly I can appreciate the Member's concern for the small communities. We have a number of communities that need gyms. The price tag on a gym is $1.5 million to $2 million. If we start adding the number of communities, which are Nahanni Butte, Enterprise, Kakisa, Detah and Gameti, we are looking at over $10 million if we start factoring in all the communities that we need.

We would like to be able to address their needs in recreation in the next little while. We have some money, we have some flexibility now that we didn’t have for many years, but at...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, many of our communities in the North are very young compared to other jurisdictions. A lot of our communities are not even 60 years in existence, and we are struggling to meet the infrastructure requirements. We have just recently done an assessment of all our communities across the Territories. We recognize that there are a lot of infrastructure needs and we're not meeting them, especially in the small communities. It's good to hear that a representative from a tax-based-municipality would encourage us to spend more money in the smaller communities.

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Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, active living has been a priority for this government for some time and we’ve increased the pressures on ourselves to commit more and more to stimulate that whole area. We have been focussing on the smaller communities. We have put in a multi-purpose hall in the community of Nahanni Butte. We have also been working with the community to put up a youth centre. So it’s not as if we have been ignoring the community. At this point, with our current standards and criteria, the community doesn’t have a population for a gymnasium. We want to be able to review...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish I could have some good news. Unfortunately, the budget is before us and we have yet to approve it before we will really know how much we have to put towards infrastructure. There have been a number of announcements over the last while, including the Finance Minister’s announcement yesterday, to put more money towards capital projects in the communities, both in non-tax-based and tax-based. However, that has yet to be approved. Although the federal Minister has announced how the money will be allocated by jurisdictions across Canada for the gas tax...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member has asked if I would work hard. I think we work hard every day.

Mr. Speaker, we are currently, and will be over the next while, having discussions with the communities as to their needs. We want them to be able to bring those forward. We want to be able to have a good discussion around that. We still have a commitment that I have made and our department has been honouring; to deal with the NWT Association of Communities, to deal with LGANT, the Local Governors Association of the Northwest Territories, and consider their input. We recognize there is a need in the small communities for recreation infrastructure. There is recreation infrastructure in larger...