Robert C. McLeod

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.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The City has made application to the federal government for some of the Green Fund, and we have supported that and are waiting to hear back from the federal government.

Thank you. The whole program review will be undertaken in the ‘11-‘12 Housing Choices Program. We have to, as a department, corporation, look at the core need income threshold and see if it’s meeting the needs of the people in the Northwest Territories, and our goal was to get more people into units. So as a corporation, becoming a little more flexible in how we try to get those people into units. I believe after this intake period we’re going to see success in getting more people into a lot of these units. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We’re well aware of the good quality of buildings that are going into our smaller communities. The Member was talking about building standards. I was saying we didn’t regulate building standards. We don’t impose it on them. It’s basically a community’s decision and the communities are knowledgeable enough to realize that they need to make a good investment into sound infrastructure to help their overall cost in the long run. Thank you.