Robert C. McLeod

I'll refrain from going on another tangent that the Member speaks of. I will be very diplomatic in my answers. Mr. Speaker, could I ask the Member to repeat that question please?

---Laughter

We provide support to the communities in a number of different ways. We help them with completing applications for the small community funding from co-ordinated work between our regional staff and headquarters staff. For larger projects, on a case-by-case basis, MACA can provide advice through helping communities hire project managers, reviewing designs with them, and RFPs, and then the regional managers of capital planning will also help communities complete their quarterly reports and claim forms. We provide a lot of assistance to the communities, and they are very appreciative of that. I...

I will just clarify it's 100,000 people, not dollars, and the federal portion cannot exceed 75 per cent. Thank you.

I could have just said yes in answer to his question. Yes, I will work with the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. We all know that he can be difficult to work with sometimes, but I will commit to working with him and seeing what kind of opportunities we can put together for people. I have been looking through a number of courses offered through other institutions and looking at what the requirements are, and there is no reason why we can't maybe look at making some of those opportunities available here. Again, the first part of it is to try to get our people across the Northwest...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't have any ones off the top of my head. I mean, I will follow up on that and see if there is work that is ongoing right now, but I take the Member's point and I appreciate his comments about trying to get our young people interested in the trades, surveying and community property assessment and that. It's a thought that we've shared, and if we can encourage our young people to take those types of training, then there could be some opportunities available for them.

My apologies. The federal portion cannot exceed 75 per cent. The communities' share would obviously then be 25 per cent, but what a lot of communities will use is the money that we give them to leverage a lot of the federal funding. We give out $28 million to communities to help with their infrastructure, so they are able to use that to leverage. That's their 25 per cent to leverage the other 75 per cent from the federal government.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know there are seven of us over here, right? Mr. Speaker, the definition of a small community, as defined by the federal government under the Provincial-Territorial Infrastructure Component and Small Communities Fund, is communities with a population of under $100,000… or 100,000 people. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we will work with the federal government. I mean, we have three roads that we are looking at. One is the Mackenzie Valley Highway, which we've heard for the last 30 to 40 years is a priority for people up and down the Valley, and it would have huge benefits to everyone down in the Valley. The other is the road to Whati and one is the road to the Slave Geologic Province. We will work with the federal government and we can put applications in there. If they decide that one has more value than the other or one that they're able to fund at this point over the other then we'll start...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we're doing the preliminary work on the roads that are in our mandate and for us to link them to the possible reductions exercise we're going through I think is unfair. Nowhere in this budget are we debating the investment in the Whati road right now. We are doing the preliminary work and we are looking to try to leverage federal funding for these particular projects. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We would like to think that the accountability framework tool has been a very valuable tool for not only our department but for community governments as well. It allows us the opportunity to identify any issues that are small before they become big issues and work with the communities to try and resolve these issues. Before we had the accountability framework, unfortunately we ran into a few situations where communities had run into some difficulties and we had to step in later. With the new accountability framework, we believe we have the tools in place to respond to any small issues before...