Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have, to my left, Mr. Tom Williams, deputy minister, Municipal and Community Affairs. To my right I have Mr. Gary Schauerte, who is our director of corporate services, Municipal and Community Affairs. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is to provide communities with $1,000 to recognize the volunteers they have in the communities, have some kind of an event for them, and that, in turn, may encourage other people to volunteer. I think this is something that is long overdue. You get a small community that can access this money and honour the volunteers in the community and that might encourage other people to volunteer. So, I think there are some other benefits to this other than just giving the community $1,000. I think it will help. I believe it will help build volunteer capacity, especially in the...

We are in the process of putting some briefing material together. I think we’re seeking time with committee to give them a briefing on all the work that Lands has done up to date in kind of our first year of operation and then get some feedback from committee. There is information that the Member has asked for specifically. That would probably be a better venue to share that information with Members. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It’s in compensation and benefits within the School of Community Government.

I apologize if I’ve confused the Member. I was made to understand that we do the block land transfer within the city, like the hinterland would go through Lands. Dealing with city lots is still through MACA. So we would do the block land transfers and we do all Commissioner’s lands within municipal boundaries too. I apologize if I confused the Member. I just assumed that MACA took care of everything like it normally does. Thank you.

Thank you. It was a decentralization initiative. I think we’ve taken $100,000 to establish a two-year term position of master trainer that’s going to be located in Hay River. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I really couldn’t give the Member an answer at this time. We’ll do some research and we’ll come back to the Member and committee. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is correct; there was a formula funding review that was done. We had a committee of 15 with representatives from all large and small communities across the Northwest Territories. They put a lot of work into this and they came up with recommendations, and now the next step is to find the money. Being as challenged as we are fiscally, I mean, they recognized that and they were pretty understanding of that. But the work is done.

I’m not sure if we have a briefing. We have a briefing that we’re going to be providing to committee on the results of our findings. There...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We would like to see all of our young people in the small communities, or in all of the Northwest Territories pick up physical activities, sport being a good one. Through this government in the 16th and 15th Assemblies we’ve dedicated a lot of funds to that effect, and we’re starting to see the results of it now. I talked about the Arctic Winter Games a couple years ago when we had 27 of the 33 communities represented by athletes, and I think that indicates a lot of the good work that some of our sporting partners are doing. The Aboriginal Sport Circle, Sport North, the...

In this particular case that area is withdrawn and we have made it known that we are not entertaining any leases on any of the areas that are withdrawn. This would, I suppose, qualify as a recreational area. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.