Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In regards to my Member’s statement, one thing we continue to see is have and have-not communities in the Northwest Territories, especially the small and remote communities, which were the reason for a lot of communities not being able to take advantage of the stimulus funding in regards to Building Canada funds. The reason that we get this is because they have substantial deficits or they are unable to identify matching funds.
Mr. Speaker, I, for one, feel that this government should reach out to those communities and try to find ways to ensure that they are able to receive federal capital dollars through a workable relationship with this government.
Mr. Speaker, in the previous government, there was a community infrastructure fund which was put forward by this government. About $30 million was given to all communities in the Northwest Territories based on a formula of base plus funding. I would like to ask the Deputy Premier, why is this government not looking at a system that is fair, transparent and that everybody can benefit when it comes to federal funding?
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Deputy Premier, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That deals with a specific program area under the mandate of the Minister of Public Works and Services. I want to defer that question to him.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Minister of Public Works and Services, Mr. Michael McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; a lot of communities have felt that they are really challenged to have input in some of the stimulus money that came in very short order to this government. The program was quite compressed from a seven-year period. With very limited notice, we were required to put in two years’ worth of projects.
The Member has also referenced a Community Capacity Fund that was provided to the communities on a formula basis. It works quite well. That was the first area that we wanted to discuss with the federal government. The Minister of MACA did bring that concept up of formula funding for Building Canada funding and also stimulus program funding. That kind of arrangement was rejected by the federal government. They felt it wasn’t something they wanted to do. We had to resolve to asking each community to come forward, to bring projects forward that were either on our government capital plan or on the community capital plan or projects that they were thinking about and had somewhat formulated and priced out. That is the rationale of how we ended up. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, one of the main reasons is because the communities either had substantial deficits, which tells me that they are in trouble. I think that we have to find a way with working with those communities that are in trouble, finding a way that we can match funds with them or have funds. Right now what I see going on with the government is that they have surplus funds in certain projects that they are going to bring forward and they are going to subsidize certain projects which are presently on the books. For me, that is not fair. I would like to know, what is this government doing to work with those communities that have a deficit situation so that they can take advantage of these federal infrastructure funds?
Mr. Speaker, once again the Member is correct. There are a number of communities that were in a deficit situation historically for long periods of time. Given our previous method of allocating dollars, I am assuming that this is changing. I get the sense from my discussions, at least, that communities are better prepared as a result of the New Deal funding and their larger formula funding dollars that are being invested in the communities. However, that is going to take time. In this case, not everybody was ready to put a project forward.
Although we have probably the biggest capital budget in our government’s history over the last year, this year and possibly next year, there are still communities that need assistance. I don’t speak for MACA, but MACA has committed to working with these communities. They have people in the different jurisdictions helping them. Of course, we have to recognize that planning and making decisions on their own or for their own communities is not something that everybody has been doing up to now. It is relatively new. It is going to take some adjustment. I hope that is going to happen fairly quickly. Thank you.
Thank you. I’d like to ask the Minister if he could give me a breakdown of exactly which communities received these federal dollars, what size the communities are and out of the 33 communities in the Northwest Territories, which ones weren’t able to take advantage of these programs. Can I have that in writing? Thank you.
Thank you. I’ll have to commit for the Minister of MACA, but there is I think roughly around 47 projects right across the Northwest Territories with the Building Canada funding and the stimulus funding and he’s listening so he should know, but we’ll commit, he’ll commit or I’ll commit for him, to providing that information to the Member. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think that it’s time that this government did an assessment of this program and federal programs and see exactly who is benefiting from them and also who is losing out on these programs simply because they’re having some financial problems or they don’t have the capacity to do it, because I think from small communities that is one of the core problems we see in our communities, is they don’t have capacity, they don’t have the human resources, they can’t take advantage of federal programs. So as a government I’d like to request from the Minister if they can commit to looking at that scenario and see exactly what we can do better to improve the programs next time around for all communities.
Thank you. What the Member is speaking about doesn’t only challenge the communities, it challenges our government when there is a huge injection of capital into our jurisdiction with a very short time frame to spend it. It really challenges us. I’ve conveyed it, the Minister of MACA has conveyed those concerns to the federal government, that we need a stable long-term agreement that would flow capital dollars so we can have everybody take part and have a piece of the dollars invested in their areas and in the areas that they want to see invested. The Minister of MACA has informed me that they’ve also put some money aside in their budgets to do just as the Member is requesting, to help the communities so that they’re prepared to move forward with other capital dollars that may come up free. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
