Robert C. McLeod

We will work with the Department of Transportation and ENR. I think we’ve already formed a working group, and we will attempt to find some resolution to this issue before next winter. In my correspondence with the Member, and conversations with the Member, he has been pointing out that it is getting to be quite an issue around some of the lakes with all the trails that are being made there. So, I’ll work closely with my colleagues and we’ll see if we can put a plan into place before the next winter season.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a return to oral question asked by Ms. Bisaro on February 9, 2015, regarding municipal information and privacy legislation.

On September 18, 2014, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs distributed a discussion paper to community governments and other stakeholders including the Standing Committee on Social Programs, the Standing Committee on Government Operations and the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Infrastructure of the Legislative Assembly for comment. In addition, the discussion paper was made publicly available on MACA's website.

Th...

I have not heard personally, but I haven’t had an opportunity to review some of the comments that came back. But I would assume it would be a concern of a lot of residents out there, especially with so many people getting out on the land now and the ability to make trails to these lands. I know, back where I’m from, we have a few trails out to some of the cabins out there. There aren’t as many as around here because of the higher usage here. But I will review that, and again, I will relay that information on to the Members. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I’m not sure what the regulations are. I would have to check with the Department of Transportation because I’m not quite sure what the regulations are. So, I will commit to working with Transportation and see what those regulations are and share that information. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, Northwest Territories residents take great pride in the beauty of their land and want to see the Department of Lands managing it in a fair, transparent and consistent way. The development of new recreational leasing policies that respond to the needs of our residents is a priority for the department.

Lands is committed to finalizing its Recreational Land Management Framework by mid-2016. This framework will apply to both Commissioner’s land and newly devolved Territorial land. The policies and planning that make up the framework will address the current and future recreational...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This Assembly and the previous Assembly recognize the challenges the small communities are facing in trying to access some of the programs that we offer. There was a time when if you had any land tax owing at all, you weren’t able to qualify for any of the programs in the small communities. We heard from Members; we addressed that; and we allowed them to carry some taxation.

In the taxation area, part of the problem that we face is because it’s a tax-based community they’re able to do tax sales. So if somebody were to lose their home based on a tax sale, then the Housing...

My understanding is all applications are vetted through a pretty similar process where we do our consultations with the local First Nation government to gather comments and concerns on the project proposal and it usually takes about 45 days to go through this process. So again, my understanding is the application process is pretty well the same. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Lands role in that would be to take the applications and go through the process with them. My understanding is that we distribute the application for comments from the local First Nations governments and other people who are involved and we take those comments and decide what next steps we have to do and whether to proceed with the application or not, or if there are other requirements that the applicant has to fill out. Thank you.

As far as the repayment plan goes, that’s something that the land owners would have to work out, I think, in some of the smaller communities with Finance, because I believe it’s through Finance that it’s administered. In some of the larger communities it’s through the community government.

As far as the second part goes, I’m not going to attempt to answer that because I’m really not sure. We have a whole suite of programs that have different rules for market and non-market communities, zone A, B and C. We have different criteria for a lot of different areas across the NWT. We try to tailor it...

I just said that we recognize some of the challenges that are faced in the small communities. We try to tailor many of our programs to get as many people into the programs as we can. In some of the larger jurisdictions, especially the market communities, they have easier access to bank financing and resale value of their units, a type of luxury that we don’t have in many of the smaller communities. So, that is the rationale for this and we believe it’s one that’s working fairly well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.