Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, a follow-up to my Member's statement. I have a couple of questions for the Minister of MACA. I would like to ask the Minister: how are we applying modern research and technology to some of the longstanding flooding and erosion problems that challenge the community of Aklavik? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Currently, the maintenance, the repair, and the replacement of roads actually is the responsibility of the Hamlet of Aklavik. The Department of Municipal and Community Affairs supports the community government to prepare capital plans, and within those capital plans, we identify climate change as an area of concern, and then the community actually decides what they're going to do. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Will the Minister look into these much-needed repairs with the department and the community to see if we can come up with the solution for this erosion?
Like I said, the Hamlet of Aklavik is responsible for their maintenance and their repair of their roads. The hamlet has spent the last three to five years focusing on the road upgrades and drainage work. They have also hired a contractor within their community to look at the effects of climate change.
The community has done a lot of great work with the drainage in the community through the capital plan, but to put more material along the riverbanks which is stopping erosion, there are a couple of areas where there is no repair along the bank to slow down the process of erosion. To put this material down, there is more funding needed to put this in place. Will the department ensure that the community has enough funding to do this work, hopefully before the spring?
In April 2015, the federal government established a National Disaster Mitigation Program with small communities; communities can apply to deal with the effects of climate change or other natural disasters. In the fall of 2016, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, actually on behalf of Aklavik, we submitted a funding request for $255,000 to create a mitigation plan that will identify the measures designed to reduce or eliminate the impact of shoreline erosion. This funding is expected to be confirmed in the next couple of weeks, and once the approval is in, we will start work early in 2017-18.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Sahtu.
