Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, a number of Ministers have made the comment that the economy is in a downturn, and I am wondering what this government is doing to correct that problem. We have heard some ideas around small community employment. We have a budget before us that is under consideration. I would like to ask the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs how she is working at closing the infrastructure gap that is delivered to our communities. Local infrastructure projects are the best way to provide shortterm gain to our economy, to create jobs and growth. What is the Minister's strategy to get that money flowing to our communities and grow our economy? Thank you.
Masi. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are a number of things we are doing. We are actually working on a strategy to address the funding gap that I talked about in Committee of the Whole yesterday, that we would be providing to the Members in the fall, coming up. We are working with the federal government to leverage their infrastructure money. Ultimately, it is the communities' responsibility to define what they want to do for capital projects and infrastructure building, so we actually provide supports to the communities to define their capital planning process.
Not to pre-empt this plan, but is this going to be a costed plan that actually has numbers attached to it, or is it an aspirational plan that talks about "support" and "working with" and "capturing" opportunities? Is it a costed plan that is going to actually deliver funds into our communities and get our economy back on track?
The plan is still under development. I suspect that there will be some work towards goals that are talked about in it and also some financial issues that we will need to address. Will it be actually costed and say: this is what we will provide each year? That, I cannot guarantee.
Mr. Speaker, of the current contribution we make to communitylevel infrastructure, does that money get spent? Does 100 per cent of that money get spent year on year?
It took me a moment to clarify what the question was. The money that we give to communities is actually their monies. They use their monies as they see fit. Some communities have surpluses with that, and some have deficits, and so we try to work with the communities that have deficits to try to address those by a deficit recovery plan.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think that is part of the issue here, is we need to make sure that that money is going into local projects. Can the Minister commit to working with communities to make sure they are maximizing this investment, I know that that is part of leveraging federal funding, but with our own dollars, and taking a look at those surpluses and seeing if they can be invested in projects for today rather than continuing our economic woes, so to speak?
This kind of infrastructure spending creates growth. It is creating record growth in Canada, as part of increased federal infrastructure investment. It is time this government took that approach, and local communitylevel spending of infrastructure dollars is the best way to do it. Will the Minister work on getting that money out to the communities? Thank you.
As I said earlier, we provide the funding to the communities. They determine what they are using the money for. Some communities are building up surpluses so they can build bigger infrastructure items. No, I will not commit to going in and using an iron fist with communities. I believe that that is a step backwards. We are working towards selfgovernment, selfdetermination, and I as a Minister will adhere to that within my term. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.
