Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Today I talked about the need for this government to assist smaller communities so that they’re able to hire qualified sports, recreation and youth staff. My question is for the Minister of MACA. Will the Minister commit to looking at this issue and to developing a plan to assist communities so they can have adequate resources to hire qualified youth staff?
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Michael McLeod.
Mr. Speaker, this is an area that we’ve had a number of communities express interest in. We’ve also had some early discussion with the Council of Sport and Recreation Partners, and we’ve talked with the Aboriginal Sport Circle staff about the needs in our communities. We all recognize that more has to be done to assist the communities.
We have a number of funding programs that are directed to the communities. However, we recognize that there are probably other areas, especially in the youth programming area, where we could provide further assistance or find a way to do that. We have already committed to look at this with a number of different organizations, such as the ones I mentioned, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, will the Minister commit to increasing much needed funding to the communities to specifically address the issue of sports, recreation and youth?
Mr. Speaker, I wasn’t expecting to get that request this soon after concluding our budgeting process. In our recently approved budget we did increase funding to youth by way of creating a second youth position for the north side of the Territories, and we have still retained one position in the south end. We will look at what we can do. We need to have more discussion with our recreation, sport and youth organizations to see what we can do as we come forward for the business planning process.
I’m talking about the government themselves hiring youth staff — people who can deal with youth concerns and do youth surveys. My question is: could the Minister talk to his Cabinet colleagues about putting a budget together sometime in the next business planning process to look at this important issue?
That’s not something we’re prepared to commit to at this point. We need to have further discussions with the different organizations that have expressed concern over our investment in the area of youth. We need to look at all the sources of revenue that we have and also to have the opportunity to discuss this with the Regular Members. We haven’t really gotten to that point yet. I’d like to do that before we enter into the business planning process.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m talking about the actual thought of a whole bunch of individuals working in this area in the communities, working for the department. I don’t think that has been contemplated, so I would like to ask the Minister if he’s committed to working with a committee of MLAs or some of the communities to develop a long-term solution to seriously look at the issue of actually having youth staff working for the department at the community level. Of course, that would be during the next business process.
Mr. Speaker, we just went through a departmental reduction that has in fact just come into play. We don’t have any funding from within to hire. If I understand the question correctly, it’s to hire staff and it sounds like right away. We don’t have those resources. We’d be reluctant to hire without the proper discussion and without being able to come forward and have that developed into the business planning process.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
