Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Community governments must complete the Community Energy Plan by March 31, 2010. The Gas Tax Agreement requires that all community governments complete an integrated community sustainable plan by the same date. Community energy plans are one component that has been considered. All communities in the Northwest Territories must comply with this arrangement.
March 31, 2010, is only a month and a half away. As the information that has been provided by the Minister indicates that only 10 communities have completed this plan out of 33, yet some 23 communities remain to have their work completed by March 31st. Hopefully we can complete some 13 communities by the end of February and hope that the last remaining one-third of those communities will be completed by the end of March. I think the question has to be asked what happens to those communities that do not complete their energy plan with respect to sustainable plans by March 31st and what is the penalty those communities will have to pay.
As we already know, a lot of our communities are having difficulties by running deficits, having challenges on capacity issues, and not having the resource people to assist them to complete this work. I feel that we have to ensure that we do everything we can to avoid this situation where communities will be penalized for not complying with the gas tax arrangements that we have with the federal government.
At the appropriate time I will be asking the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs questions on the situation of what happens to communities that don’t comply.
