Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. On May 28th the Minister made a statement in the House. He talked about an accountability framework that has been developed by MACA in conjunction with the Local Government Administrators of the NWT and the NWT Association of Communities. I applaud that. I wanted to just ask the Minister a couple of questions relative to this accountability framework and his statement. There are a few things that I would like to get clarification on.
It is not clear to me from the Minister’s statement, and I would like to ask the Minister if he could kind of advise me and the House what is the purpose of this accountability framework. What is the intention of the department and of its partners in establishing an accountability framework for communities? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Because we have given the communities a lot more responsibility and a lot more financing, the purpose of the accountability framework is to work closely with the communities to have a pretty transparent system of how that money is dealt with. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Minister. We give communities a grant, an infrastructure contribution and we have given them the responsibility of using that money. Does the Minister mean that the department is trying to keep tabs on communities? Is that kind of what this accountability is intended to do? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I wouldn’t say it is to keep tabs on the communities. I would call it work closely with the communities to ensure that public funds are spent the way they should be. It is more of a communication tool. We want to make sure that public funds are well looked after. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Minister for that. I appreciate that. I firmly agree with the Minister that we should be making sure that public funds are used properly. But in the Minister’s statement there is a statement he made that I really don’t quite understand. I would ask him to clarify. The Minister stated, “We will be asking communities to provide quarterly reports to ensure the framework continues to meet their needs.” Does this mean that communities are required to do quarterly reports on their spending or does it mean something else? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we do keep tabs on the community spending. We work with communities. This here is just to see if this accountability framework is meeting their needs. Is it working for them? Is communication between the community and MACA? Are there ways we can improve? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate this is intended to be a communications tool and a back and forth. I guess I just wanted to say that asking communities to report quarterly may be kind of onerous. It sounds to me that the Minister is open to suggestions for improvement on this framework. Is that correct? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we could have asked them to report once a year. That may not have been enough to satisfy some Members. We could have asked them to report 12 times a year. We thought for the first part, this would be a good starting point. If there are other options we can explore in the future such as less reporting once things get rolled out really good, then there may not be a need for further reporting. I am sure the communities will let us know that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
