Thank you, Minister McLeod. Do you have witnesses to bring into the House?
Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.
Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. I’ll ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to escort the witnesses into the Chamber.
Minister McLeod, could you please introduce your witnesses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. To my left I have Mr. Tom Williams, deputy minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. To my right I have Mr. Gary Schauerte, who is the director of corporate services for Municipal and Community Affairs.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. I will open the floor to general comments for the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs. Mr. Bromley.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I really just have one question. I wonder if the Minister could tell me how this budget has changed with devolution.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. With devolution came the responsibility for land, so we transferred 19 positions from our lands department over to the new Department of Lands.
Has the budget dropped commensurately?
In my opening remarks, I said our budget did increase by 1 percent, an increase of $665,000. Even with the drop in the positions that we’ve had and the money that goes along with it, we’re still faced with some challenges and some forced growth and that, so overall, we had an increase of $665,000.
I’m just asking because some departments have not been showing. They’ve adjusted their budgets to show what their budgets would have been last year if they didn’t have those positions, so that’s why I’m trying to get clear on this. Despite the fact that we’ve lost 19 positions here, this department has increased its budget slightly is my understanding right now.
The Member is correct. Despite the fact that we did transfer $2.73 million along with the 19 positions, we’ve had $3.43 million in forced growth. Part of it was the money that went in, $500,000 for the youth resiliency and $150,000, so it turned out that we were still $665,000 more, an increase of $665,000 over last year.
I’m just wondering, like, 19 positions, say, would be a couple million dollars, and transfer of $2.73 million, so we’re not transferring any O and M with that, just the $2.73 million? I just want to be clear on that. It sounds like there hasn’t been much efficiency in the transfer of 19 positions and the programs that go with them.
My understanding is that O and M did go with it, so they were fully-funded positions.
That certainly provides clarity. It doesn’t show me much for efficiency, but it does give me an accurate basis on which to discuss the budget.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. General comments. Does committee agree we go to detail?
Agreed.
Committee, we’ll continue with detail after a short break.
---SHORT RECESS
I’d like to call committee back to order. We are on Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, page 6-7, department summary, operations expenditure summary, $99.451 million. We will defer this until activity detail and information items have been considered. Page 6-8, information item, infrastructure investment summary. Are there any questions?
Agreed.
Page 6-9, information item, revenue summary. Questions?
Agreed.
Page 6-10, information item, active position summary. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the Minister had been here when I asked each department all of these numerous detailed questions about their human resource management, whether they are funded or unfunded. I can go through the whole list, but I think he’s heard it a few times. We could probably save a lot of time by me just going to the Minister. I want that detail as far as these position allocations are concerned. Is he able to provide them? If so, that is my only question on this area. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a list here with a lot of the positions. I don’t think it’s going to do any good if I just read it out. I’ll provide a copy of the list to Members. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. He said he would provide the list. Again, I assume it is a breakdown of funded, unfunded, et cetera. I am seeing nods from the staff’s heads, so it sounds like that is everything I need. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Committee, we are on page 6-10, information item, active position summary.
Agreed.
Page 6-13, activity summary, directorate, operations expenditure summary, $5.455 million. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to note on the previous page that it looks like we’ve dropped 20 positions from this department rather than 19, according to numbers here. I just noticed that we’re up 33 percent with compensation and benefits for the directorate and yet we’ve gone down 20 positions in the department. I see we picked up a property assessment and the directorate has gone up by five positions.
Could I just have an explanation, given that we’re dropping a lot of our responsibilities in the department – sorry, we are transferring a lot of our responsibilities over to Lands – and recognizing we picked up property assessment, why are we up the five positions and the 33 percent increase in compensation and benefits? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We only mentioned the 19 because we haven’t told the twentieth person yet. No. Nineteen are funded, the twentieth one was an unfunded position. We didn’t feel we had to report it.
The property assessment, we are keeping that function within MACA because it was lands. We are transferring that function. It’s going to the directorate, I believe, because they will still be responsible for doing the assessments and all the Commissioner’s land within community boundaries, so we thought it was important that we retain that part of it within MACA. That’s what you see the internal reallocation is for. I think it’s $857,000 that we have moved over from lands to the directorate. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Bromley.
That’s all I had, Mr. Chair. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Next on the list I have Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have one question here and it has to do with the work that is being done to investigate whether or not communities can, or will be able to, assess a hotel levy. I’m asking particularly for the municipality of Yellowknife. I know there was some work being done. It’s been a very long time that this work was being done. Can I get an update on where things are at? Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy Minister Williams.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. In regards to the hotel levy, we had some consultations with the Hotel Association here in Yellowknife and also with officials from the City of Yellowknife. It’s something that is still on our work plan. We still want to do some further consultations. Again, it’s added into our legislative agenda that we have, so it has been booked within our legislative agenda.
Thanks to the DM for that. I appreciate that it’s on the list, but it’s been on the list for about three years now. Is this something that’s going to get solved one way or the other before the end of the 17th Assembly? Thank you.
Yes, we certainly see some movement on it and hopefully we can resolve it either way during the life of the 17th Assembly. We still hear there are some hotel operations outside of the city of Yellowknife that don’t agree with a hotel levy, so we have to make sure that we have something that works for all communities in the NWT. We will certainly try our best efforts to get it resolved before the end of the 17th.
Thanks to the DM. I guess just in terms of the philosophy, I’m having great difficulty understanding if this is something that can be applied by each individual community, should they want to do it, why does the disagreement of a hotel operator in a community outside of Yellowknife, impact on the possibility of Yellowknife applying that levy? Thank you.
Again, as I mentioned, there’s still some further consultation that has to take place. We’re open to listening to the Yellowknife hotel operators. I think this summer we will be going through some more consultations with them and see if we can have a product that can work for Yellowknife hotel operators, but ideally we would want something that could work for all communities across the NWT.
Thank you, deputy minister. Next I have on my list Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to welcome the Minister and the MACA team here again this evening. This question could be easily posed in the community services area later on in the department, but I’m asking it under the term directorate. It should be no surprise to the Minister, he’s heard me explain my concern here when we had the Department of Health and Social Services and this is the topic of our drinking water.
It is a fact that the drinking water quality base falls under the purview of MACA. MACA administers this website that controls the database for chemical testing and the bacteriological testing that should be occurring throughout the Northwest Territories on a monthly basis as per federal guidelines. Yet, Mr. Chair, when one continues to dial in and try to get updates, especially in the wake of the Obed spill that we had before Christmas, I’m still quite puzzled why a number of communities, especially those communities along the Mackenzie water basin area, places like Fort Smith, Hay River, all these place that are on the water, potential contamination zone, we are not seeing robust and rigorous testing as per our guidelines.
Can the Minister or designate shine some light on this as to what are the barriers for us not doing the reporting? If we are doing the reporting, what are the barriers for us not having it in the database? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. ENR has got some monitoring equipment, I believe, in Fort Smith and on the Mackenzie River. As far as the drinking water quality, the community operators take the samples and then they, in turn, provide those samples to Health and Social Services and they do the analysis.
As far as the website goes, we recognize there are some improvements that need to be made to the website, so we have a project team that has been put together to complete the work on the drinking water website. We are expecting a launch date of the new, updated site of June 2014. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
