Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated, I have questions about dredging in the Hay River area. I’m going to switch gears and maybe ask the Minister of MACA about the disaster mitigation and if there’s any funding available for dredging of the Hay River area.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Robert C. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the Economic Action Plan that was announced in 2014, there is a National Disaster Mitigation Program, and in our discussions with them we brought up the issue of the flooding in Hay River and how dredging could help assist that community. We believe that if we can get an application into this fund, this would be an eligible category. They haven’t worked out the allocations for the money yet and the details and we’re just working on that now, but we will work closely with the Member and the community of Hay River to see how we can access this money. Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate the Minister giving me that information and I look forward to working with the Minister as well.
Can the Minister give me a little more details on the information? What is this program – it’s a federal program, I’m assuming – and what is that federal program designed for?
Thank you. I’m also the Minister responsible for emergency measures, and a couple of the FPTs that I’ve gone to we were informed that the old JEP funding it was called, Joint Emergency Preparedness, was being replaced by the Disaster Mitigation Program, and this is to assist communities and jurisdictions to try and fix up their infrastructure so they can actually try and avert some of these disasters of flooding in Hay River, for example, is a good one.
So it’s a new program, it’s a federal program and I believe that they’ve announced there’s a $200 million price tag attached to this. However, this is going to be divided amongst all the jurisdictions. We haven’t decided on the formula yet. So as soon as we have more details on how we can get our hands on some of that money, because we do have a lot of flooding in the Northwest Territories, we will share it with the Member, members of committee and the communities that are affected by this. Thank you.
Thank you. I look forward to working with the Minister and the Town of Hay River to alleviate this problem. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Comment. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
