Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In follow-up to my Member’s statement earlier today, I talked about a non-government organization doing really great work on behalf of the government for residents of the Northwest Territories. I’d like to ask the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs today, how does this government fund certain types of sports organizations, such as the NWT Rec and Parks Association, Sport North, all these organizations that do really good work in promoting health and wellness in the Northwest Territories.
How is funding allocated to these sport organizations through this government? Thank you
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The funding is distributed by the NWT Sport and Rec Council based on an application process. This is approved by the Minister. So that’s how all the organizations get their funding through the Sport and Rec Council. Thank you.
Thank you. Since it’s been an application-based request for funding, I know when we go through this budget process, whether it’s O and M, or the O and M budget especially, a lot of our departments will put in a forced growth aspect to the department’s getting their funding, but I’m not too sure if that happens at the NGO level, especially when we’re giving funding through the Sport and Rec Council.
I’d like to ask the Minister, is forced growth, such as increased wages, increased costs to travel to the communities, taken into consideration and is that affected into the year-to-year operations and budgets of these organizations. Thank you.
These organizations submit budgets and the funding is application-based. So we assume that they’re calculating their own forced growth as part of their application. Thank you.
I know that every year through the SRC, they have a certain amount of budgets. So they always look at if they won’t get the revenues that they usually do, then they’ll have to be looking at possibly cutting down programs or services in other areas.
Would the Minister or the department look at possibly subsidizing, should the revenues be lower, some of these programs so they can continue? Is that something the department has looked at, some type of subsidy moving forward, should revenues within the SRC not reach what they were in the previous year? Thank you.
A lot of the funding that we approve and the Sport and Rec Council distributes to the organizations is dependent on the lottery monies that we receive with all our terminals across the Northwest Territories. They’ll be made aware that if the lottery monies are down and our revenue is down, then that may affect their application. I’m sure many of them take into consideration the fact that our revenues are down and they may not get exactly what they got last year. But we try to make every effort to ensure that all these programs are funded and that they’re able to deliver the programs to the folks on the front line. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This government has done a lot of work in the area of prevention and promotion and health and wellness awareness.
Has the Department of MACA looked at partnering with other departments, such as ECE or Health and Social Services, to do a collaborative effort should some of these fundings be not as high as they used to be, but also having a more collaborative effort in terms of doing healthy eating, active living and putting them all together and that way they can share the ultimate benefit in terms of education awareness? Thank you.
Thank you. We are partners with ECE and Health and Social Services through the Healthy Choices initiative and some of the programs that we work with through the Active After School Program and we have a food program that’s pretty well fully subscribed to. I think just about every community and school in the Northwest Territories receives money, except one, through the Active After School Program. So we work with our colleagues over at ECE and Health and Social Services to try and access as much money as we can that we pass on to communities to deliver all the important programs that they run in small communities. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
