Robert C. McLeod

I appreciate the Member’s concern for the small communities and the infrastructure that they are building in the communities. I don’t think it’s irresponsible of us. I think it’s very responsible of us to work with the communities and ensure that they are building buildings of the highest standard, and I believe they are doing that.

I said before, we can’t assume that the communities are incapable of making good decisions that affect their own infrastructure without us imposing it on them, and I will continue to hold that position unless I hear differently from the communities that maybe we do...

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to provide an update on the delivery of the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation’s capital acquisition plan for 2009-10. In May the governments of Canada and the Northwest Territories announced in excess of $117 million in investments in housing in the Northwest Territories over the next two years. These investments are intended to be an economic stimulus and job creation initiative, as well as an important investment in social housing.

As Members are aware, this funding has been characterized as “use it or lose it” as all funds must be committed by March 31, 2011...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member’s concern. As you pointed out, we are working with communities to have their energy plans and we can’t assume that the communities are incapable of building infrastructure that would be to their advantage to build it according to the highest standards possible. I think we’re starting to see that in a lot of the communities. They understand the savings that they could potentially make. So we’re starting to see that. We’ll continue to work with them and encourage them to look at the standards that they’re building. But I’m fairly confident and I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following two documents titled 2009 Volunteer Summit Report and the Northwest Territories High Performance Athlete Grant Program. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, there is no grey area. The formula funding is flowed to the communities to deal with a lot of infrastructure that is required in communities and the community makes the decision as to how they want to spend the money that’s flowed through them. You can’t budget for unforeseen. It’s impossible to budget for unforeseen. We deal with those as they happen.

There was a situation that the Member was referring to where something happened in his community. The community saw that a need was there and they took care of it right away and, working with MACA, we were able to...

Mr. Speaker, I will have discussions with the department and follow up on the Member’s comment on the report. I haven’t seen the report personally and I would be quite interested in having a look at it. I will follow up and see what recommendations or actions may have come out of the report because of the flood of a few years ago.

I’ll say again that we continue to assist communities in identifying a lot of their priorities and if shoreline erosion is one of the priorities from Aklavik, then we’d be willing to work with the community to try and identify sources of funding for the project and...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member wanted to make something quite clear and so do I. I never made the comment that Members didn’t care about the communities. I don’t think I’m that stupid, to be quite honest with you. What I said, and the Member talks about the 14 years that he’s been here, and he’s been able to see the devolution of authority to the communities and he’s able to see the past history where a lot of the small community projects got into the corporate plan and they were basically just bumped and bumped and bumped each year when other emergencies come up. So I just wanted to make...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m well aware of the flooding issue in Aklavik. I’ve been through a couple of them and I know that there was some shoreline erosion done a few years ago and that seems to have worked very well. There are some issues that still need to be taken care of. We do supply -- and I go back to this because I do all the time -- the communities with capital infrastructure money and they decide that if it’s a priority to have this work done, then they have the capital means to do so. If there are other programs out there, federal pots of money that we can access to assist the...

In response to the Member’s first concern, we will forward all the information that we have to the Member so they can see where this particular initiative is at with the federal government.

On the second point, we continue to work with the communities to identify lands that are available. I’m not quite aware of the situation in Tulita, but I will have a chat with the Minister of Housing and see if we can come up with a plan for dealing with that. But I will find out about it and I’ll get back to the Member, and maybe he’d be able to let me know the exact issue there.

Mr. Speaker, the questions that the Member raises will be addressed. There will be an opportunity for more input into the process. We are, between now and the summer session, wanting to come back with an LP and that will give Members an opportunity to suggest some changes, with a possibility of introducing a bill in the May/June session. Thank you.