Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We had eight vacancies as of March 31st. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I take the Member’s point. I mean, there’s a discussion that we should sit down with committee and get some input from committee as to what some of their recommendations are. If there’s a design of the program issue then we’ll have to address that. This is an issue that’s been on people’s radars for a while so I think it would be prudent of us to sit down with committee, get some feedback and go away and maybe come back with a redesigned program working with committee. But I will commit to that process. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we agree that our folks in the communities need to understand their roles as well and the responsibilities they have to ensure that they have the proper capacity to deal with the lot of money that they are having to deal with because they do have a lot of responsibility with us giving them all their CPI money and with their O and M. Our role, we see, is to assist these community governments. Through the accountability framework, we believe that, as I said earlier on in the session, that gives us the opportunity to identify any red flags and pick out any issues...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is correct. That would have to be an amendment to the legislation to change the amount. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That money was a reduction to the contribution to NWTAC. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we’ve contributed just over $2.1 million towards that. I think it was a $38-million funding gap that was identified through the work of the formula funding review, which actually was supposed to start at the beginning of the 18th Assembly, but it was decided in the 17th Assembly that we’d initiate that work, so it would help us to identify some of the shortfalls that we’ve been hearing about from the communities and find ways we can address it. This year we’ve contributed $2.1 million towards that, and as our fiscal situation improves, we would be able to help...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the CPI funding the Member is referring to is not touched. It hasn’t changed. It will not change, unless we can increase it somehow in the future, but it’s been at $28,002,000 for a while. A lot of communities will use this money as cost share dollars for some of the Building Canada Plan projects. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the Member is correct. We do look at what other jurisdictions charge. Mr. Schauerte pointed out that there is a bit of a cost recovery. If Members are interested, I am sure we can provide a document that compares our fees to other jurisdictions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the communities are aware that they can apply for this money and they can bank it. I mean, our staff give annual updates at the NWTAC AGM, and they work closely with the communities. Communities are well aware of some of the options that are available to them. Again, we’ll go back to working to build the capacity and the expertise and having our communities respond to emergencies.

The answer to the Member’s question is the communities are aware of the options that are available to them. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, in one particular case, the Member’s riding, we are planning on going there this fall to help them prepare for an election that they are going to be having. We believe, in this particular case, it is probably wise of us to go in there after the new council is elected to provide some training. I think we even heard the comment about providing training to any potential candidates that might be wanting to run in an election. That might be an option too. We haven’t gone through what we went through with this particular community. We want to ensure that all of mayor...