It was an interesting meeting we had in Fort Resolution, a very good meeting we had with the seniors in Our Great Elders Facility. They did raise the concern about the usage of that facility. I had a preliminary discussion with the Minister of Health and Social Services upon my return. The Housing Corporation do own the infrastructure and there is some concern in the community that this infrastructure is not being used as well as it should be. I’ve had some discussions to talk to the appropriate parties about how we can best make use of the whole facility. If that includes the four seniors...

I can assure the Member and ministry out there that it would not be my intent as Minister of WSCC to proceed with the regulations until all stakeholders have had an opportunity to have one last comment on it. Then as far as the financial part of it, those would need to be worked out. I can assure the Member that this is not something we will just implement without seeking feedback.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can assure the Member that any feedback is not a waste of time. I can assure him that in the February meeting of the committee they will take all correspondence that they’ve had, all consultation, all feedback that they’ve had and do a summary and provide written correspondence to those that submitted the recommendations. Then they will continue to consult with them and make sure that all their input is taken. I can assure the Member that the input is taken quite seriously.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Five years was the initial program. The initial review was going to come five years after that. I mean, who knows? It may be something that could be done, as the Member says, biannually. Five years, actually, was one that was agreed to in concert with the NWT Association of Communities. They felt that was a fair length of time, because there was a lot of responsibility devolved to the communities and thought five years would be a good indication of how this was working and doing a review and see where we need to go from there. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’ll change the name from New Deal to Good Deal.

But going back to the streetlights, it’s the same thing as I responded to Mr. Menicoche. I mean, there are opportunities where the community can work with the Power Corp, but I take the Member’s point. Maybe we need to sit down with all parties that are affected by this, because it’s a whole ownership issue and that’s something that I think we need to clarify. So I would be willing to commit to the Member that I’ll try to get all the information clarified for him.

When you talk about settlement to hamlet, and even the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. MACA will do what it can to work with the communities to assist them with some of the capacity challenges that they face working with LGANT and NWT Association of Communities. We’ve had the human resource plan that’s out there and it seems to be working well. We have people working with the smaller communities.

As far as the Member’s particular question goes, the actual formula for O and M, I’d be able to provide the details. The Member is right; it is quite complicated. It takes a lot of things into consideration. I have no problem providing the information to...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Part of the duties of the assistant fire marshal will be going into the communities and assessing some of their equipment, working with the communities to identify the life of their equipment, and possibly working with the communities to put that equipment into their capital plan. Obviously training, as the Member said, is huge. No point in having a fire truck in the community if you don’t have the training for it. That’s where we see in this part of the new program that I had mentioned to this House a few minutes ago, is training is a huge part of it and it’s...

That’s one thing MACA sees their role as now, is to provide advice and expertise to the community or work with them to define the appropriate people to do the jobs. We see where our role is at now. I’ll actually have Mr. Aumond expand a little further on that.

The communities have used some of their infrastructure dollars that they get from this government. Some communities have an opportunity to use the gas tax money that they get. Some have used Building Canada Fund money to do some of the work on their roads. As a department we have absolutely no infrastructure dollars. I mean, $28 million right down to the last $2,000 goes to the communities. We leave it to them. If there are ways to identify or go after more funds to assist the communities, then that’s something that MACA is always going to do. If there’s federal money available, it’s something...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have with me Mr. Mike Aumond, deputy minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.