Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier this year I was working with the Municipality of Fort Liard. Unfortunately, they had lost a member in the river and they had quite a few expenses for search and rescue. I understand it is under the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs. We do have a fund to assist with search and rescues. I would like to ask the Minister to tell me a little bit about the program. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; we have a contribution for community-organized searches that may provide contributions to support community-organized search for missing persons. If we go into the definitions -- and I am going to share this with the Member -- it talks about a public search that needs to be conducted by the RCMP and this has to fit into that area. So I’d be willing to provide some of this information to the Member.
In this case, the municipality, actually the Acho Dene Koe of Fort Liard did actually put in a request to access these funds because they expended quite a bit of money, and I certainly supported that. I sent in a memo to the Minister and it was denied. I’d like to know how does a community access that fund that’s sorely needed, especially when it calls on the resources of communities, families, friends, et cetera. Thank you.
The contribution funding is typically provided for a community-organized search of a prolonged length and duration, and the public search by the RCMP has concluded and the community government has incurred expenses related to the community-organized search. However, we did have, I believe, a couple of requests. I’m not quite sure of the amount of the expenses. I don’t think I’ve seen that number personally yet. So I think it was one of the reasons that it was declined, because we had had a couple of requests come from the community of Fort Liard. Thank you.
I certainly support the cause of the ADK Band membership to submit their bills of $10,000. Is the Minister willing to review this particular request once again? Thank you.
I’ll commit to the Member that I’d be willing to have a look at this. Again, I mentioned, and maybe it’s a discussion that he and I need to have, but we did receive a couple of requests from the community of Fort Liard. But I will commit to the Member that I’ll look at the expenses that they may have incurred there, if they can substantiate them and if it’s something that we need to sit down and discuss. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I understand that some of the parameters are that the contributions are to the officially recognized municipalities, the hamlet or whatever, but we have had instances in the past three or four years where we did provide contributions over to the band councils, because they’re the ones, it’s their membership, they’re the ones that expend the most money there, Mr. Speaker, and I’d like to ask the Minister if that will be considered as well. Thank you.
We will consider that. We also have to be sure that as far as community searches go, if we get a couple of applications for reimbursement from the community, then it’s unfair to one group or the other if we approve one or the other. So I would have to review the whole situation and see exactly what happened in the situation in Fort Liard and I’ll communicate with the Member and then hopefully we can get a resolution out of this. Thank you.
