Thank you, Mr. Bromley. We’ll deal with that last statement as a comment. Committee, we’re on page 363, Municipal and Community Affairs, directorate, operations expenditure summary, $3.915 million. Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I just want to follow up on the local improvement charge. It is allowable, for instance, in the city of Yellowknife to have a local improvement charge on a property for sidewalks for instance. So why is it different, then, for renewable improvement? Thanks.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. For that we’ll go to Mr. Schauerte.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I believe what the Member is referring to are developments to a subdivision that benefit all residents in the neighbourhood where the local improvement charge can be tied to the property at the point of sale. In the case where it’s local improvement to an individual residence where the whole neighbourhood doesn’t benefit, this is where there is an issue with a municipality of fronting the cost of that and then recovering amortized over a period of time.
I think we would have to commit to getting back to the Member and providing a much more substantiated answer relative to how local improvement charges impact individual residents or individual properties as opposed to a neighbourhood as a whole. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to Mr. Schauerte. I look forward to that information. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Again, committee, we’re on page 363, Municipal and Community Affairs, directorate, operations expenditure summary, $3.915 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Page 364, directorate, grants, contributions and transfers, total grants and contributions, $470,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you. Page 365, directorate, active positions, information item. Any questions?
Agreed.
Seeing none. Committee, page 367, lands administration, operations expenditure summary. Any questions?
Agreed.
Committee, page 369, public safety, operations expenditure summary. Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have questions about two things here. I did warn the Minister in my opening comments. I want to know where we’re at with the 911. Are we moving forward at all, or are we simply going sideways or backwards? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. A considerable amount of work has been done on this. I think we have requested some time with committee to provide them an update as to some of the work that we’re doing. Thank you.
Thank you. A briefing would be good. So, I guess, is there going to be anything concrete happening in the 17th Assembly? Thanks.
As I was saying before, we have done a lot of work. We’re looking for some feedback from committee and then I think the contractor has done a lot of good work for us. My understanding is these are all complete and we will have some time with committee to get some feedback from committee and, after that, make a determination if it’s feasible to try and implement this during the life of the 17th. There would be some money attached to it, obviously. It more than likely will be a transition issue, but the work is completed and we will provide committee with an update. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. I will wait anxiously to hear what’s coming in that briefing.
My other question here has to do with the ground ambulance and highway rescue situation. As I understand it, the Minister mentioned in his opening remarks the funding of $400,000 to enhance community capacity in this area. I would like to know…and I think on page 370 I believe it’s mentioned. Yes, it is. I hope, Mr. Chair, I can reference a number that’s on page 370 that also goes to page 369. The ground ambulance and highway rescue is set at $400,000. It’s been that, the same as last year. There was an increase from 2013-14, which I was glad to see, but it’s still a minimal amount of money in terms of what the communities are required to do in terms of ground ambulance and highway rescue.
Can I ask the Minister, first of all, is there any plan to increase the amount in ’16-17? Because I think $400,000 is certainly not enough money. Secondly, there was some work that was done around this program and the criteria for municipalities to get this money, I believe, was an application-based process before. Is it still the same? Do communities have to apply, or is this funding that goes to a community to help them? Hay River, Yellowknife, Simpson, for instance, to help them deal with emergencies on the highway?
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. I’ll allow the continuance of questioning. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think it was maybe last year or the year before, we did have a bit of an increase in this fund. I think we’re up to $400,000 now, as the Member mentioned. It’s fully subscribed to. We have a number of communities that are taking us up on this. It could help with equipment. However, I think the communities’ priority is to provide training, and I think we’ve been working with Transportation to provide some first responder training.
It is a program that is fully subscribed to and we are making some progress on this again. There are options there to help the communities with equipment if need be.
Thanks to the Minister. That was my recollection that it was for training and for equipment. Has the department encountered situations where a community does not go onto the highway to provide ground ambulance and/or rescue services because they’ve determined that it’s costing them money, it’s outside their municipal boundaries, there’s no reimbursement from the territorial government for the expense that they are incurring? Is this something that the department has seen and/or heard about? Because I can foresee that the time is going to come when a municipality is going to say we can’t afford this so we’re not going beyond our own municipal boundaries, and that’s going to have a huge impact on the safety of our highways.
We have heard that concern. First of all, I don’t think there’s a community that will not respond to an issue or an accident or a call from outside their municipal boundary, because their priority, obviously, is the safety of people first. They will respond knowing that it could cost them money and then they wonder about the billing part of it. We have heard that concern and I think we are doing a review of the Highway Emergency Alerting Protocol. But I just wanted to make the point that I have not heard of any municipality turning down a request for assistance because it’s outside their municipal boundaries.
To the Minister: I’m glad that that is the case, but I want to urge the department to look seriously at the issue of cost to municipalities for going outside of their municipal boundaries for highway ground ambulance and rescue. Certainly, there is going to become a time when if money is extremely tight and a municipality does not want to put an extra burden on their taxpayers and/or they don’t have the money in their budget, it’s entirely possible that their council may direct them not to go out to do a rescue because it’s costing them too much money and they can’t afford it. I urge the department to find some method of funding municipalities for rescue services outside of their municipality.
Through the formula funding review this is an issue that was discussed and we’ll continue to move forward on this. I think we’ve had a number of recommendations that have come out of that. The government, actually, you know, we’re challenged fiscally, and the people that worked on the formula funding review recognize that. But it is an issue that has been brought up and we need to find ways to deal with it.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Committee, we’re on page 369, public safety, operations expenditure summary, $1.741 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Committee, page 370, public safety, grants, contributions and transfers, total contributions, $400,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Committee, page 371, public safety, active positions, information item. Any questions?
Agreed.
Page 373, regional operations, operations expenditure summary, $83.372 million. Does committee agree? Mr. Bromley.
Thank you. I believe there was a review going on about whether our formula for regional operations and maintenance programs are sufficient. Does this reflect that, or has that review been completed? I know we were doing that for infrastructure, as well, but I just want to get on top of the operations side here.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is correct; there was a formula funding review that was done. We had a committee of 15 with representatives from all large and small communities across the Northwest Territories. They put a lot of work into this and they came up with recommendations, and now the next step is to find the money. Being as challenged as we are fiscally, I mean, they recognized that and they were pretty understanding of that. But the work is done.
I’m not sure if we have a briefing. We have a briefing that we’re going to be providing to committee on the results of our findings. There was a lot of good work done with this committee and they took everything into account. We’ll provide committee with that briefing plus the recommendations and then we’ll have to see the next steps and where we go from there.
I appreciate the response and I’m happy with that. I guess, just leaping to the bottom line here, I assume some changes were recommended out of the review and that we’ll be discussing those. Are we, according to the review, vastly underfunding our communities, or is there anything that we can have a preliminary look at or be aware of on that? I know there is always a lot of context to go with numbers, but I’ll leave it at that.
There were some gaps through this formula funding review that were identified. I think one of the bigger gaps is the O and M funding. Again, we have to, as a government and this Assembly and possibly the 18th, find ways that we can try and address those gaps. I think that’s going to be a huge undertaking. The work is complete, but again, the next part of it is finding the funding.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Committee, we’re on page 373, regional operations, operations expenditure summary, $83.372 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Committee, page 374, regional operations, grants, contributions and transfers, total grants and contributions, $77.601 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Committee, page 376, regional operations, active positions. Any questions?
Agreed.
Seeing none, committee, page 379, School of Community Government, operations expenditure summary, $3.261 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Committee, page 380, School of Community Government, grants, contributions and transfers, total contributions $580,000. Does committee agree? Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I’m just wondering why the decrease in the contribution to A Brilliant North. This is increasing the capacity in our community staffings and it’s gone down $100,000, which is not a heck of a lot of money, but I’m sure, over a number of communities, would have a very large impact. We went up quite a bit in ’14-15 but now we’ve gone down $100,000. Can I get a reason? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister McLeod.
Thank you. It was a decentralization initiative. I think we’ve taken $100,000 to establish a two-year term position of master trainer that’s going to be located in Hay River. Thank you.
