Robert C. McLeod

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...

Mr. Speaker, that will happen. On the Lands side of it, we’ve inherited the Territorial Lands Act, which is a huge piece of work. We also are working with the Commissioner’s Lands Act that we had worked with previously. That is a huge undertaking, and I can commit to the Member and all Members of this House that that work, I think, in the life of this government anyway will have to do the initial work. The bigger piece is going to have to be done, I think, in the 18th Assembly, to amalgamate those two acts. It’s a huge undertaking, but it’s one that we’re aware of and one that has been brought...

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...

Mr. Speaker, I believe the Member is referring to the smaller communities, repayment plan for the smaller communities, or all communities in general. Maybe if I could just ask the Member to clarify which part of the market he’s speaking to, then I will respond accordingly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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...