Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, properly maintained community infrastructure makes our communities safer and more cost-effective, and will provide jobs and economic growth in the short term. Will the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs explain how far along we are with closing the $27-million gap that our communities are lacking? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister for Municipal and Community Affairs.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, through the Formula Funding Review, the communities did identify a shortfall in funding that they receive. We are still in the early stages with that, and it's not infrastructure funding, it's actually O and M funding, so we are still in the early stages with that, and we will have to come up with a strategy on how we are going to deal with that as a Legislative Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Yesterday, this House adopted the mandate of the Northwest Territories for 2016 to 2019. In that, there is a commitment that we will develop a strategy to close the gap in funding levels to meet municipal core needs. The Minister just alluded to that. Can we have some timelines on when that strategy will be prepared for consideration by the government or this House?
We have to take into account the fact that we've already done the Formula Funding Review, and that was work that we accelerated during the life of the 17th Assembly. That was actually supposed to start at the beginning of the 18th, but we felt that it was important that we identify what the communities would need and then, at the beginning of the 18th Assembly, or during the life of the 18th Assembly, see if we can come up with plans to fund some of the funding shortfalls that were identified. We have to recognize, though, in our challenging fiscal situation, and with the rest of the mandate and some of the costs that might be associated with that mandate, I think we are going to have to prioritize our issues going forward. With the challenges that we are facing financially, we'll have to determine what are some of our priorities. I just said it twice.
Can the Minister answer if this strategy will include spending money or if it will just be a strategy on paper?
You have to have money to spend it.
---Laughter
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps I might encourage the Minister to ask our friends in Ottawa if they can provide $27 million to fund our communities that are badly in need of it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We have been very fortunate in the last number of years where we have received infrastructure money from Ottawa. We had the Building Canada Plan from a few years back that put over $245 million into the Northwest Territories. A lot of that money flowed to the communities. The communities actually did a very good job with the projects. Through the New Building Canada Plan, we had $258 million booked for the Northwest Territories. Out of that, $38.4 million was allocated to the communities. The rest of the money actually went into our transportation projects. We just approved bundle 2, and we have another bundle that we have to approve, and we're going to have that. We have been very fortunate that we've been able to access a lot of money from the federal government to help with our communities, and through the gas tax money, too. They changed a lot of the criteria in the gas tax funding to include more projects.
I think that's where we see our communities are challenged now on the O and M side to deal with a lot of the O and M on the infrastructure money that they've been given. We’ve worked with them to allow them to use some of the CPI funding they get from Municipal and Community Affairs to help deal with some of the O and M on projects. We will continue to work with our counterparts in Ottawa, with the new federal government, and the commitments that they have made as far as infrastructure spending go, we have to hold them to that. We have to be sure that we're down there getting our share of the infrastructure dollars on a base plus basis, not a per-capita base. We'll continue to work with them and we'll keep the committee informed as to the work that we're doing.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Mackenzie Delta.
