Okay, if we can conclude grants. Grants, $100,000.
Agreed.
Mr. Minister, you can answer Ms. Bisaro’s question.
Mr. Chair, this has been a stable source of funding for a few years. We have not really had any indication from any of the sport and rec partners that they are underfunded. I am sure if they felt they were underfunded and came forward with requests, then we would have to have a look at it, but at this point they seem to be... I shouldn’t be speaking for them, but until you hear from them, you assume they are quite satisfied with the funds that they’re getting. Thank you.
Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. That leads me right into a question with regard to Sport North who has indicated over the years that they’re not being adequately funded to manage the trials and transfer, whatever, the whole dealing with athletes in and around Arctic Winter Games; regional trials, territorial trials and then taking the kids to the games. So I would like to ask the Minister has he not ever heard that Sport North has difficulties in funding those trials? Thank you.
With this we multisport game funding of $650,000 that will flow to Sport North trough the Sport and Recreation Council. We are confident this will address a lot of their concerns about the lack of funding. Thank you.
I will take the Minister at his word. I have another question with regard to the youth contributions that are on this page. There are three items: youth contributions, youth centres, youth corps. There are another two or three items that are also about three or four pages further on in another section. I mentioned in my comments, I’m a little concerned that we’ve got pots of money for youth in various and sundry places and I’m a little concerned that we have situations where the right hand may not know what the left hand is doing. So I’d like to get a little comment from the Minister as to why we need to have funding for youth in various and sundry places. Why can’t we combine it? I think there might be an opportunity to provide, in some instances, more funding to one organization because it can be combined into one pot and better distributed. So I would appreciate a comment in that regard. Thank you.
I kind of figured this question would be coming up. It’s a good question because it does seem like there is youth money all over the place here. But we have different criteria for each of these different pots of money and I suppose if we put it all into one pot and whoever comes forward with their applications for or puts together the best applications and they might be getting more than their share. As I said before, as I was doing my comments to the opening remarks, we are confident with the new website that’s being launched, that would answer a lot of these questions. It would be a good map to access some of the different pots of funding within this particular department and across government. We try to keep them separate because these are pots of money that are specifically for youth purpose and the criteria might be a bit different. Thank you.
Thanks for the explanation. I guess we have to agree to disagree. I’m not so sure that telling people to go to a website to find out what funding is available is the best way to make sure that the money gets where we want it to go.
I would like to ask the Minister why we have funding for youth corps in two different places in this particular budget. It’s on page 6-34 for $825,000, and it’s again on page 6-39 for $500,000. The descriptions are exactly the same. What’s the difference between these two? Thank you.
One of the youth corps pots is for territorial-wide initiatives. The other youth corps funding goes to the regions for regional activities. Thank you.
Next on the list is Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. A quick question. On the volunteer contribution, I’m wondering if those are fully taken up every year.
Minister of MACA.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the uptake on this particular contribution has been quite slow, but we’re working at trying to get it out there and get it utilized to all the money that’s available. Thank you.
I’m just wondering what the process is. Obviously, this is something that MLAs should be able to help out with and I would think we’d be willing conduits to help get the application information out there to our constituents and organizations, community organizations. I’m just wondering what is the process that organizations should know about.
Mr. Chair, they can apply to the regional offices or to headquarters. What I can do, and I can commit to the Members, is that I’ll put a bit of package together and I’ll give it to all Members, because, as Mr. Bromley said, you can be conduits to the folks out there that may not know that this initiative exists. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate that commitment. I wonder if the Minister has had a chance to look into it to see if it’s something onerous about the application. Maybe, rather than a question, I’ll just ask him to commit to making sure it’s not an overly difficult process that’s stymieing people. I’ll leave it at that. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, I don’t think it’s a question of it being an onerous process. I think a good reason that the uptake is not as high as it should be is because probably the information is not out there that this is available. That’s why I’ll commit to the Members that I’ll get them some information and they can pass that on to their volunteer groups. Thank you.
Under contributions, $3.265 million.
Agreed.
Total grants and contributions, $3.365 million.
Agreed.
Information item, sport, recreation and youth, active positions.
Agreed.
Moving on to page 6-37, Municipal and Community Affairs, regional operations, operations expenditure summary. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ll try the question that I put quite some time ago. The review of the operations and maintenance funding model for community governments, I gather that that has been done. I wondered if I could get some indication of what that review found and what implications it had for this budget. Thank you.
Minister of MACA.
Mr. Chair, I’ll have Mr. Aumond respond to that.
Deputy minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The review of the O and M formula did not take place this fiscal year, so the formula applied again in 2010-11. The intention is to undertake the review with our partners at the NWTAC and LGANT in the 2010-11 fiscal year. Thank you.
Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wondered, then, on what basis was the increase to community government funding based. The increase that’s in this budget, I presume? Thank you.
The forced growth was based on the existing formula, the existing policy that we used to provide O and M funding to community governments. Thank you.
Sorry; maybe it’s the late hour, but I’m a little obtuse. What forced growth? I mean, is there a percentage for that or is it based on forced growth with the GNWT? Thank you.
It’s a formula base that takes into account factors such as the cost of utilities, population growth and so on and so forth. It’s set down in policy and as those factors change, the costing of those factors change and the formula that provides the O and M money that goes to communities changes as well. The same would apply to water and sewer. Thank you.
Next, I have Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. With respect to regional operations, I don’t really see the line item here or if it’s in here at all, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention summer student positions in the different regions. Actually, I don’t see it so it’s probably… I’m not too sure how it operates in the budget or is it an HR function to provide internships and summer student positions? Maybe the Minister can answer that. Thanks.
Minister of MACA.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the regional offices will usually determine how many summer students that they might need and then they would just fund it themselves. Thank you.
I just wanted to indicate to the Minister that, I think, previously we were using 1.5 summer students, but I think what worked well for my particular riding was the number two, so I just wanted to indicate that once again. Thank you very much.
We were glad that we were able to have the two positions in the Member’s riding. If the regional office determines that that’s what they could use again, then I’m sure that’s what they’ll be doing. Thank you.
Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just looking at the cost of operations and maintenance and capital investment planning and so forth in this division, many of the things are energy related, ultimately, and I know Arctic Energy Alliance, in their attempts to assist with community energy plans, have hit a bump in the road when they try to collect fuel consumption information. I know this is collected routinely by MACA annually from service providers and from community governments, and I believe the plan was that they were to provide this information to the Arctic Energy Alliance to assist with the community energy planning. I’d just like to get some sort of confirmation that that, indeed, has happened and is in the process. I know that this was a sticky point for the Arctic Energy Alliance. Their mandate was to assist these communities developing their community energy plans. They received funding from MACA to help with that and so on and yet they were stymied with the lack of information. So I’m just wondering if we’re there and if that’s been looked after by the department. Thank you.
Deputy Minister Aumond.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don’t know specifically whether they requested the information from MACA or not, but if they did there’s no reason why we wouldn’t provide it to them and I do know that maybe the Member was referring to information that they were maybe looking from another department with respect to fuel consumption in the communities, but anything the Arctic Energy Alliance would request of MACA we would provide to them. Thank you.
Just again, you mentioned you had that document with a list of communities that have done the study. Is there a chance you could give that to the Clerk so we can maybe circulate it? I think we’re talking about the same thing here. So that information might be helpful to the Members. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, that’s fine. I’ll follow up with the Minister and provide him with the backup I have and he can set things straight in my mind and hopefully things have been resolved. Thank you.
Okay, we’re on page 6-37, Municipal and Community Affairs, activity summary, regional operations, operations expenditure summary, $71.943 million. Agreed?
Agreed.
