Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The reason it’s not showing any allocation there is because we haven’t signed the new agreement yet. We’re hoping to have the new agreement signed by the end of March.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have a duty to consult with the Aboriginal governments. We do try and consult with as many interested stakeholders as possible, but we do have a duty to consult with the Aboriginal governments. Again, this is another issue that, as we go into the next business planning process, if the Members and committee feel that this is something that we need to address, I suppose we will have to have a look at it then. My basic understanding is we have a duty to consult, so we provide some funding for that. Thank you.

We had a long time to get ready for this question. I’ll ask Mr. Schauerte to explain the reduction in money.

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to present the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs’ main estimates for 2014-2015. The department’s main estimates propose an operations expenditure budget of $99.4 million, an increase of $665,000, or less than 1 percent, from the 2013-2014 Main Estimates. This increase is a result of $3.43 million in forced growth, an increase of $1.6 million in initiative funding, and sunsets and transfers totaling $1.01 million.

MACA has a number of key priorities in support of community governments. This year we completed the Accountability Framework for...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. None of the money is going to Yellowknife this year.

I’ll commit to the Member that we’ll try and gather some of that information, if possible, and we’ll share it with committee.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. When we got the question last year, I was hoping that we’d just reallocate this funding to other areas because we have one legitimate request in for this money right now. So we’re having a look at that. But I think as we go forward we may have to take this $168,000 because all the money that we do have, we allocate to the communities on a formula. Then we have this one pot here with $168,000 and it gives the impression that we’re funding anything that’s extraordinary. So we’d like to have a look at this one application we have now, but I think going forward we may have to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That’s something that we could look at, but I can tell the Member that from the applications and the money that we allocate, a lot of this money goes to programs such as the Member is describing and we normally have a list where a lot of the money went. I can say that a lot of the money did go to, it actually went throughout the whole Northwest Territories. It doesn’t really have it broken down as to what the actual activity was, but I’m sure we’d be able to find some of that information and share it with committee, but I do know there’s a pretty good balance there. Thank...

It seems like when you go from 86 to the number that we have here, it’s a lot, but if you look at the 86 plus 33 that we inherited, that’s 119, so there are 119 existing positions. So there are 119 positions that are doing the work from AANDC and the territorial government, and we’ve identified, I think, the need for 25 new positions. I’m not sure if we’ve filled them yet but, I mean, we’re going to have to start briefing committee after April 1st to fill them in on some of the direction that we’re going on some of the hiring that we’ve been doing. It’s actually 119 existing. I know 86 came...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ll just touch briefly on that and then I’ll ask the deputy to speak to some of the meetings that they’ve had with some of the interested stakeholders, but I did commit to following up because there was some changes being made to the National Building Code. Actually, to be quite honest with Mr. Bromley, I haven’t followed up on that yet. I meant to go back into the site and see what some of the changes were, but I know our department has been working with some of the stakeholders in getting some of their input. So I’ll ask Mr. Williams to touch on that and I will commit...