Today I talked about the importance of providing adequate support to deliver sport recreation youth programs to my communities and to another riding. My questions are for Minister of MACA.
Mr. Speaker, what is the Minister going to do to assist the community of Lutselk’e regarding problems associated with the operation costs of a new arena?
We have been working with the community of Lutselk’e for some time, since the beginning of this project, when we came forward with a partnership arrangement to build and construct the arena. That has been done. The arena’s been opened for operation since January of last year.
Since then, we’ve continued to work with them on a number of different areas, including some of the deficiencies that had to be rectified. We also worked with them to identify, through their O&M dollars, priorities of investment for this facility. We’ve also provided, through the new deal, additional dollars for capital that they can utilize for enhancements such as a Zamboni or other things in the area of capital for the facility. We’ve also worked with them to identify an adequate source of utility funding for this facility.
On a previous occasion the Minister replied to one of my questions about working for sport and youth infrastructure from different sources. Can the Minister tell me if he has worked directly with the communities of Lutselk’e and Fort Resolution in regard to leveraging dollars from other sources?
Mr. Speaker, as indicated earlier, we had an excellent partnership arrangement with Lutselk’e on this facility. The community had wanted to see this facility a lot bigger than what we had initially targeted to build in the community. They came up with some of their own funding from their own sources to increase the size, increase the footprint of this facility.
We haven’t worked directly with them to attract new dollars. We have worked with other communities such as Nahanni Butte to spend money on their gym, but in the community of Lutselk’e we haven’t. Not as a specific community but through the gas tax program, we are working to try to expand the criteria so that the smaller communities and the larger ones in the Territories can utilize some of their funding towards recreational facilities. Thank you.
In one of the previous replies from the Minister pertaining to the new deal, the Minister indicated there would be evaluations on the new deal. Can the Minister tell me if the evaluation of the new deal has been planned for Lutselk’e and Fort Resolution?
Mr. Speaker, the quick answer to that is no. The evaluation is something we plan to do. At this stage it’s too early to go down and do the evaluations in the communities. We’d wait a little while longer before we start that.
