Robert C. McLeod

There have been a lot of challenges with the transfer over. However, we’re quite confident that once the assessments are transferred back to Housing, then I think we’re going to see an improvement in a lot of the services we deliver; especially the arrears. There are a lot of people who have been accumulating arrears because the assessments are not being done quickly enough. So we’re working with tenants and we will continue to work with the LHOs, because this has affected their overall financial position and we’re quite confident once we move the assessment back to the LHOs, that will...

We do have LHOs right now that are quite capable of taking over the assessments. However, we were hoping to wait until the June date to make sure we had everything set to go before we implemented. But if there is an opportunity for some of the LHOs to maybe take this on a little earlier, I can follow up on that and see if the LHOs are ready. I know most of them are, but we’ll see if the opportunity is there for us to do this. I will follow up on that.

Mr. Speaker, I’ll take that question as notice.

Mr. Speaker, again, I say this is a private corporation within municipal boundaries and if it ever came to an emergency such as that the Member’s describing, then I think we’d be working with the city to see how we can take care of the problem in conjunction with the city. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my time as Minister of MACA, which has been about a year and a half now, I have not had this discussion with Cabinet. I’ve had some conversations, are we able to do this, but MACA is not mandated to fund corporations or private landlords for the provision of water and sewer infrastructure. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, since the introduction of the New Deal we really don’t have the capacity to deliver capital projects on behalf of the communities. The department has been restructured to support the communities that want to deliver their own capital plan and if we were to do that in this particular case, I would see that as a step backwards in not being able to develop community capacity. But, like I said before, we continue to want to work with the community so they can set up an interim corporation so that they would have all the authority to make the decisions that affect their communities and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it’s actually a federal act that prohibits the community from owning real property under the federal Indian Act. We have been working with the community and other communities to try and find solutions so the communities would be able to deliver their capital plan, and we would continue to try to work with the community of Lutselk'e to come up with some options for accessing the capital money. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we continue to monitor the situation because we know it’s a concern to Members across. We will monitor it if we have to work with the city to find some alternative funding arrangements, whether it be, you know, there’s the gas tax money that the city receives, there’s the capital formula money that the city receives. This is a private corporation and if we were to start that process for one, who’s to say that in a small community if you own an apartment and the water and sewer goes, that the government will pay for it. This is privately held land within a municipal boundary. Like...

Mr. Speaker, I think nowhere in my answer did I say we’d rather wait until something happens before we act on it. This is a private corporation within a municipal boundary. We will work with the city if we have to try and find some solutions to ask MACA to fund it. I think with our $168,000 in extraordinary funding, I don’t think that will get us very far. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can commit to having that discussion with my Cabinet colleagues; however, I will encourage the community to take the responsibility, take the first step in forming an interim corporation, then the money would be able to be flowed to this interim corporation and they would look after the projects on behalf of the community until land claims are settled. But this would give the community the authority, so I would encourage them to do that. Thank you.