Mr. Speaker, I have a return to Written Question 3419(2) asked by the Member for Yellowknife North on February 24th, 2022, to the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs regarding the municipal infrastructure gap.
Municipal and Community Affairs acknowledges that there is a municipal funding gap of approximately $40 million, of which an estimated $23 million is related to capital; $10 million to general operations and maintenance; and $7 million to water and waste services. This is based on an estimated total of $3 billion in community government assets.
In 2014, community detail was shared with communities for information purposes to give councils awareness for their budgeting and future programming decisions. At the time of the review, there was very little information on the cost of piped infrastructure, solid waste sites and roads. These are significant municipal government assets; therefore, estimates were made to ensure costs for these assets were included.
Since the 2014 review, the department has been doing research for better costing of community assets. This is an ongoing process that takes time as communities replace these assets infrequently and historical cost information is not available for most communities.
For this reason, the department does not have updated community detail available at this time. An estimate error of $1 million is less than 1% of the total $3 billion. However, $1 million in a particular community would be significant and misleading. It is not in our interest to release what may not be accurate information.
Municipal and Community Affairs will be updating the community government funding policies during the 20222023 fiscal year and is committed to creating an advisory group with the Northwest Territories Association of Communities. Costing estimates, community details and an approach for regular community updates will be shared and finalized with the updated policies. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
