Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I talk about the infrastructure in our small communities and I specifically spoke about the potholes and Fort Good Hope’s chipsealing program that the government has eliminated. I want to ask the Minister of MACA, in light of all the initiatives we have done to empower our communities to make their own decisions and the limited amount of funding the communities have to compete with other priorities, is MACA looking at other options within the municipality in the NWT Federation of Municipalities or even the Government of Canada to look at how we can help small communities deal with chipsealing issues, repairs or just to get these programs into the communities because we have such a limited budget here in the North?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I’ve stated on a number of occasions in the past, responsibility for community infrastructure now lies with the community. We have been fortunate that we have been able to access the Building Canada Plan money, the infrastructure stimulus money, as well as all the infrastructure money that we give to the communities. They have received a significant amount of money. If there are any projects that are meaning to be done in the community, it would be a community responsibility to identify the projects and work with the funding that they do have.
With the amount of responsibilities that we give to the communities, there needs to be the matching dollars to go with the responsibility. I want to ask the Minister if there are any discussions, either with his Cabinet or his own staff, to look at other additional support funding such as the ones that he’s listed off. We appreciate it, but there are ones we could look at within the life of this government to see if funding like this could be discussed at a federal-provincial level to look at chipsealing programs and dust control in our communities.
With the responsibility that we’ve given the community, we like to believe that we’ve given them a significant amount of money to help them with that. It’s a benefit to the community in a number of ways.
In all our dealings with the NWT Association of Communities, meeting with the mayors and councils and that, we’ve really had no concerns, and we continue to work with them and making sure that they have the capacity, that they’re trained to take on the responsibility. My understanding is the Minister of infrastructure, Mr. McLeod, will at his first opportunity be raising with the federal Minister, once he’s named, our desire to explore other funding options for the Northwest Territories.
I look forward to that. It’s good news that the Minister has noted that the Minister of infrastructure along with the honourable Minister to look at how they can support communities. I want to ask the Minister if he’s going to involve the other municipalities in the North to look at how they can get their message to the Minister of infrastructure once the meeting is held with this government to look at dollars that could be supported in the communities for infrastructure such as the potholes or if we want to somehow initiate some partnership on chipsealing some of the communities.
Each community has five-year capital plans and I’ve had the opportunity to see some of the plans. They’ve identified some of their priorities in the community and I want to commend them for doing a very good job. We have a very strong NWT Association of Communities membership. The president sometimes attends the Federation of Communities and Municipalities, FCM, and they have opportunity there again to raise any concerns that they might have with funding from the federal government to the Northwest Territories. It is an ongoing work but we continue to support the communities with a lot of technical expertise and training. We’ll continue to go along those lines, but the communities themselves have done a very good job at working with the money that’s given to them.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister, with the support of technical and training to the communities, has the Minister entered any discussions with a company called Easy Street that can look at repairs to the chipsealed roads that are already done in the communities that have done main street chipsealing?
That is a program that is no longer available. This was before the communities had the responsibility of making their own decisions. I’m sure if the community has some concerns, then they will initiate discussions with Easy Street and see if it’s something that’s feasible for them to apply to their roads. At the end of the day, I’d like to point out that the ultimate responsibility and the decision lies with the community.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
