Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to also speak on NGOs. I’d like to thank the members of the Government Operations for bringing this mini theme day forward. It is a very important issue, especially out in the communities.
We are very concerned about the level of funding that’s being provided. As my colleague indicated, one of the community groups in Hay River definitely would want to receive some funding, but have limited success getting funding from the territorial government.
There are many organizations out in the communities that need this type of funding. Some of them are new organizations. Some of them are organizations that just feel defeated. The committee has given us information on how many people applied and how many people were eligible, and half the people that applied were not eligible. Whatever the criteria, they were eliminated from the process. The money that they do get, you have to fit a round hole in a square peg type of thing. That’s the problem. There is a difficulty there.
We hate to sit here and criticize Yellowknife and our colleagues here, but the majority of the funding goes to these centres. Some of them are Yellowknife funds, but some of them are territorial groups, territorial groups that say they are territorial groups, but we are having difficulties in the fact that some of the funding is not getting out to those regions. Some of the funding is burnt up on O and M and operation costs of running these organizations. I know they are trying their best. I know they are trying hard, but it is frustrating when some of these organizations are supposed to be representing the Territories and the funding doesn’t ever get out to the regions at all. There have been several communities or organizations that I’ve talked to that said, we don’t get any assistance, or we get a small amount of assistance to do a special event, I think. We definitely need to increase the funding. We definitely need to look at the criteria that fit this program. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
