Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs some questions, some old questions on the New Deal. Under the New Deal they’re turning the facilities over to the community of, specifically, Jean Marie River. The issue was that they had committed to train people to have local resources to help maintain and upkeep the facilities. To date they’re not in a capacity situation. I’d like firstly to ask the Minister what the current status of the New Deal is, as it deals with Jean Marie River.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll try to give some new answers to old questions. The New Deal is one that’s been embraced very well by the community governments. Obviously, there are challenges as far as capacity goes in some of the responsibility that they’ve inherited. But the communities have come along really well, working with our partners at Local Government Administrators program. There’s a training program that Jean Marie River is actually one of the recipients of some funding for, to help train one of the local band members to eventually be in a position to take over the operation of Jean Marie River.
As far as the infrastructure goes, we do work with the communities quite closely to make sure that they’re positioned to be able to handle the infrastructure and maintenance that comes with it. I know in Jean Marie River’s case they have been working with Public Works and Services to do some of the maintenance until they’re better positioned to handle the maintenance themselves.
I guess the facilities and assets do get transferred to the community come March 31st. Is that assistance still there up until March 31st or does it end March 31st? That’s the issue that the community of Jean Marie River is talking about: that they’re not ready yet, and it’s very, very costly to bring in outside services to the community.
Obviously, we’ll do our best to make sure that we don’t leave Jean Marie River on their own as far as the maintenance goes. We’ll work with the community to try to come up with – they usually work with our departments very closely – a maintenance plan, capital plan, and so forth.
Again, we need to make sure that our communities benefit from the transfer, if it means training opportunities for their local residents. There are some cases with some of the communities that have inherited the New Deal where they’ve kind of bundled together and hired maintenance people to make a tour of their communities and take care of the maintenance. We’ll work very closely with the community of Jean Marie River to ensure that they’re not left out on their own without any assistance from MACA.
So is it the Minister’s intent, with regard to Jean Marie River, to continue with the deal as it is, which means transferring the facilities over to the community come March 31st? They are anticipating an impact to their budget.
That was the intent of the New Deal right from the beginning, to transfer all assets over to the community and have them responsible for the maintenance of the infrastructure. Again, we work with them and make sure that we’re not setting any of these communities up and putting them in a position where they fail. That’s not our intent. We’ll work very closely with the community but the intent is still there to transfer all assets over to the community.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I guess one of the questions that they did ask me is: Can the transfer be delayed until the question of sustainability and ability to maintain the assets are in place?
Obviously, I’m not going to make that commitment here on the floor, but I can assure the Member that I’ll have discussions with the officials, see where Jean Marie River is at, see what challenges they’re facing and if there’s any possibility of delaying. I’ll work with the Member and the officials to ensure that Jean Marie is in a good position to succeed once everything’s signed over to them.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
