Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I stand before this Chamber and our colleagues to speak about something that is very important: community capacity building, especially in the smaller communities in the NWT. Mr. Speaker, if you talk to people and ask them what it means to them, you could get hundreds if not thousands of variations of the definition. Today I would like share with you one that resonates with me. Community capacity building is a concept approach to social and personal development that focuses on understanding the obstacles that inhibits people, governments, and nongovernment organizations from realizing their development goals while enhancing the ability that will allow them to achieve measurable and sustainable results. Mr. Speaker, what does this mean? Well to me, it is the process by which people, organizations, society systematically stimulates and develops their capacity over time to achieve social and economic goals, including through improvement of knowledge, skills, systems, and institutions with a wider social and cultural enabling environment. Community capacity building is much more than training. It includes things such as human resource development, organizational development, just to name a few. Community capacity is all about developing and strengthening the skills, abilities, and processes and resources that communities need to survive, adapting to change in needs of their population that is served and thrives in the world. Capacity building is a process of change. People and community capacity change over time. A focus on what development policies and investments work best to strengthen the abilities, skills, and knowledge based upon cannot be on oneoff interventions. There can be shortterm results, and often in crisis situations like comanagement arrangements there is a need for such. But even after shortterm capacity gains such as getting the community out of fiscal situations, the community must be supported by sustained resources and political commitment to yield longer-term results, truly impact on existing capacities. Capacity building is about the who, how and where decisions are made, management takes place, services are delivered, and results are monitored and evaluated. Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, colleagues. However, in saying this, the government cannot just say here you go. It needs to do the job to ensure we prepare them to do the job. Today, Mr. Speaker, later on I will have questions for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. Thank you.
Masi. Members’ statements. Member for Yellowknife North.
