Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Thanks for that. Yeah, I appreciate that the Minister's going to talk to committee but I think it has to be a bigger conversation. The public needs to know what's going on as well and have an opportunity to have a say in this. So is there going to be some kind of public options or evaluation report, or how is the public going to be engaged in this as well? Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister of MACA.
Yeah, I agree with the Member, and this is something that we have talked about. But for the detail, I'll turn to the deputy minister. Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy minister Gareau.
Thank you. Yes, the intent would be to do some public engagement so that the public can understand what the project is and what the options are and have an opportunity to provide their feedback. I don't have the exact timing on that but it would be likely within the next couple months. Thank you.
Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Yeah okay, no, thanks for that; I appreciate that. As part of that process, are we going to be looking at, you know, response times, use of various languages, and effectiveness/efficiency measures of the system as well? Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister of MACA.
Yeah, that's part of our evaluation process. Thank you.
Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Okay yeah, thanks; I look forward to getting more information about that.
I just want to turn over the page now to ground ambulance and highway rescue and, you know, in a former life, I was a Yellowknife city councillor, and, you know, I'm not sure if this funding has actually changed from when I was a city councillor. You know, that was back in 2006 if I remember correctly. And then, you know, the city said that they weren't going to provide emergency services on the Ingraham Trail anymore because of I guess the inability to make much progress on this. I hear that COVID has caused some delays here. But when are we finally going to come to grips with ground ambulance, highway rescue, and how this should be properly funded and that, you know, we look after public safety properly? Is there a plan to actually deal with this? Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister of MACA.
For that detail, I'll turn to the deputy minister. Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy minister Gareau.
Thank you. Prior to the COVID pandemic onset of the COVID pandemic, there was an interdepartmental committee made up of Justice, Infrastructure, Workers' Safety, Health, and MACA to look at how we can better build capacity around the ground ambulance and have emergency services function.
As part of that, the GNWT did commission a study. This was I believe in 20182019 to look at the operating environment and look at an acceptable delivery model; what would that look like. That study did look at communities, those providing emergent services, so the five communities that are currently involved in the function. And, you know, the priorities included looking at options for governance and, you know, what's a suitable funding level between the GNWT and community governments recognizing that the communities that are currently delivering this service do have the ability to raise own source funds.
A high-level action plan was presented to communities. This was in late 2009 based on that report. And unfortunately, that work was has been put aside as MACA and public safety division was dealing with the COVID response. However, we are reengaging on that work but we don't expect to have anything for probably you know, probably not for another four to six months until we can all the departments involved in it can reengage on that. Thank you.
Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I know our government seems to be pretty good at building highways. You know, Inuvik to Tuk but there's still no road that doesn't quite go into Whati. And we just keep building these roads and we don't really do very good planning around them, including public safety. So I just want to urge the Minister and the department to get on with this important work. Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Are there any further questions? Member for Tu NedheWiilideh.
Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple quick questions. The Office of the Fire Marshal, I just wanted to just to add my comments on that. There's a budget of $512,000 there for to helping that office. But my experience working construction in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and also working with the Housing Corporation and working with the local housing authorities in the communities, the thing is that when I think about the municipality or even the city of Yellowknife, the property lines in this area here, most properties around the city of Yellowknife are about 50 by a hundred. And between the building and the property line, you could probably get away with 1.5 meters from the building to the fence and then the next one over, the same thing. So you would have probably about the 3 meters between building to building. And that's acceptable in a place like Yellowknife because they got a fire department down the road; you got fire hydrants, etcetera.
But my experience in the communities, they don't have fire hydrants. You know, they don't have that in some of the communities I've seen, anyway. And they wouldn't have a fire department that's probably just down the road, and that's volunteer.
So two things that comes to mind is that I know communities are talking about doing residential and commercial block development. I just want to make sure that from my experience, when I was working in the communities of N'dilo and Dettah, we were told by the fire marshal's office that you had to be from 40 feet from the building to building. And, but yet our residential lots are in our communities are given out by Chief and councillor are 50 by a hundred. So that doesn't work. So I just want to make sure that is MACA prepared to work with communities that don't have, you know, the fire hydrants and 24hour manned fire stations? Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister of MACA.
Thank you. Member for Tu NedheWiilideh.
Okay, thank you again; good to hear that, really good answer.
Now that I know your answer, also I think it's important, you know, that we have a department here in the Northwest Territories that could take the lead on outside larger cities of Yellowknife that could really enforce the, you know, National Building Code, fire code, all the codes that are out there. The thing is that also what I notice is that the GNWT, whenever they undertake a project, they through Infrastructure, it's laid out very clear right from when the you know, the geotech, the architectural engineers, contractors, construction warranty, and the whole thing, and it's really good because it's laid out closely and they work closely with the fire department. However, prior to you know, going back to 1991, it was never like that, and especially in residential homes in the communities where houses are built really close and that kind of thing. So I think that we need to continue to build on the fire marshal office in areas of inspections so that, you know, we don't have any fires down the road where buildings are very close. So I'm happy to see that we got some money in there but I don't know, is that enough? Or are we going to be building on your staff to continue to enforce the all the codes out there? Mahsi, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister of MACA.
Thank you. Yeah, so presently, the office you're looking at is out of Yellowknife but we do have assistant fire marshals in the communities and are in the regions and they work on that as well. As the deputy minister said, there's a couple of vacant positions but we utilize other regions there. So we feel comfortable presently that this budget is adequate for what we need to do. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Tu NedheWiilideh.
Thank you, Madam Chair. One final question is that I know the Minister said yesterday about the work of the communities. I just want to make sure that when they work with the communities that it's either we're going to follow the the fire code from building to building, which is 40 feet, and that is considered in their design when like, for example, the community N'dilo and Dettah, we have a community plan but right now the lots are 50 by a hundred. In actual fact, if we were to follow the fire marshal's office, it should actually be 70 feet by a hundred feet, 17 by a hundred feet and so on. So I just want to make sure that that's considered when you guys are working with the First Nation governments. Thank you.
Thank you. Minister of MACA.
Yeah, so I'm not going to get into specifics because I don't know the specifics, but I can guarantee you that our staff will be working with the Indigenous and nonIndigenous governments to help them address these concerns. And we will make sure that the fire marshal's office and the regional offices are aware of this concern. Thank you.
Thank you. Are there any further questions under public safety from Members?
Seeing none, Municipal and Community Affairs, public safety, operations expenditure summary, 20222023 Main Estimates, $3,372,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. We will now turn to Municipal and Community Affairs, regional operations, on 351 with information items on 352, 353, and 354. Questions? Don't all jump at once. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll have a couple of questions on community municipal infrastructure gap.
I see there's about a $1.3 million increase here. Can I just well, can I just clarify firstly. Are we going to meet our goal of closing the municipal funding gap by $5 million, and can the Minister speak to how that works with the formula that actually factors in a number of cost increases over time into the gap? Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister of MACA.
I'll open and then I'll turn to the deputy minister. So we allocated or Cabinet and based on what our priorities was was to find $5 million. We're at 4.1 or $4.2 million right now. And we will be able to get the $5 million for the next we'll hit the $5 million mark at the next one.
But as for the other questions, with your permission, I'll turn to the deputy minister. Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy minister Gareau.
Thank you. MACA uses the forced growth process available to departments through the annual business planning process to look at inflationary increases for the formulas that we use to allocate communities with their funding.
The focus in the life of this Assembly has been finding that $5 million to reduce the municipal funding gap. And we continue to work with community governments on better understanding their inflationary pressures and helping them finds ways to mitigate costs and to raise own source revenue. Thank you.
Thank you. Minister?
Yeah, and just recently we had the opportunity to have a conversation with the President from NWTAC, and we've come up with some conversations and some ideas that they would like us to process or try to address moving forward. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Yellowknife North.
Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Well, as the Minister knows, and I talked to him about, I submitted a written question setting out the funding gap by each community. Because if you go and look, the last public information you can find is from the 2014 review. But I'm hoping the Minister could speak to the willingness of the department to find a way to publish this going forward by, you know, each of the three categories for each of the communities and perhaps even, you know, just a bit of an explanation of how those numbers were calculated or how we got there. I'll note finding real time figures and data for the deficit is very, very hard. Is there any work being done to make sure we publish this information going forward? Thank you.
Thank you. Minister of MACA.
Thank you. No, there isn't anything right now. Thank you.
Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I sure hope the Minister answers my written question then.
I guess, you know, there is no secret that all municipalities across Canada are experiencing very tough pressures on their infrastructure, and it's no secret that we as a government are also doing that. I'll note there's a number of relatively well, no, there's a number of massive kind of federal programmings funding community infrastructure right now. Some have different expiration dates, and quite a few of them flow through GNWT.
Can the Minister speak to any kind of lobbying efforts or work we're doing with NWTAC and the communities as federal counterparts to make sure that, you know, that the systemic issue of municipal infrastructure being underfunded is being addressed? Because if we're not going to make some progress here against the inflationary pressures, perhaps we can at least, you know, work on things like gas tax and the community infrastructure bank and stuff like that. So can the Minister speak to any of the kind of asks we're make to the federal government? Thank you.
Thank you. Minister of MACA.
So, yes, so presently when new funding comes out from the federal government, we're there trying to see if we can access it, if we can help with the municipality. As I said previously, and I think the last question that the Member asked, we did reach out to NWTAC. They've come up with a process that they're triterritorially that they're talking about and whether there's a different three different avenues that we're working on together collaboratively and they are in the process of working with us. And there may be potential for the three territorial ECs to meet with the three Ministers on this and then they're potentially reaching out to I talked to to have conversations with the Premiers on that. So this is a very live issue. We understand the challenges. People have heard the concerns on this floor here today and elsewhere. So we are working on it, and we are trying to address this difficult challenge. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Yellowknife North.
Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I know the department, well, is reviewing the three policies and, you know, I eventually understand we will update them. I get the kind of scale of that task and getting into the weeds of hundreds of millions of dollars and billions of dollars worth of infrastructure. But I'm just wondering as part of that work whether there is any desire to bring any of this into regulation or to bring it into contract with municipalities. I think there is a bit of a I get that we don't want to bind future Assemblies but the way that municipal or that school funding formula, as a contrast, works is much more predictable. And it's set out in regulation and we without we know the DEAs know what they're going to get. And I think since we've come up with these new funding formulas, it's been a bit of a question mark about how and if we are ever going to close this gap. And if the reality is that that we're just never going to close it, then I think we need to tell communities that because capital planning takes 30 years and they have to decide whether to pave roads or whether to switch to trucked water or whether you know, to make very large decisions. To stop building recreational infrastructure.
So I'm just wondering if as part of we can we what is the timeline on reviewing all of these policies and whether there's an effort to give it some predictability of what this looks like going forward? Thank you, Madam Chair.
