Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my next set of questions are for the Minister of Lands. My colleague, the honourable Member for Deh Cho, started a line of questioning earlier today with regard to community lands, and I would like to continue along those lines.
Mr. Speaker, I just want to get to the point. If cities and towns are doing long-term planning, they already have these community plans in place. In the case of the City of Yellowknife, it is a ten-year plan; they revive it every five years. In order to do long-term planning, the city has, a number of times, requested to get its hands on all of the land within the municipal boundary.
I am wondering why the government still insists that we would have to piecemeal plots of land to the city on a request-by-request basis rather than just give them the lands within the municipal boundary as a whole, as one greater land application. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Lands.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you for the question. As I say, there is no policy to turn over all Commissioner's land within the municipalities to the municipalities. We need to have applications. As I mentioned when I referred to the regulations earlier, we need to know the purpose for which the land is needed.
We also have lands needs for our government, so we simply can't turn over everything to the municipalities. However, again, upon application, we may turn the land over to them if it fits the criteria. Thank you.
The Minister is saying that we require plans. The plans always identify the needs. In the city's case, it is over ten years. They know what their needs are. They have applied for all of those lands in what was called a greater land application, and it has been denied in the past. They have done it up to three times.
They have done all of the process. They have provided the plan. They have provided the applications, and they have been denied. The Government of the Northwest Territories has their own needs. Certainly, they can plan to carve off their needs and then give the rest over to the municipality. Is that not possible?
We naturally want to move fairly cautiously in this area. As I said, there is an application that municipalities can make. It may not be that we have finalized all of our needs for the future. There has to be some sense in this, in that we realize that towns, municipalities, and cities do have a need for land.
On application, we have been turning over land to them. We will continue to do so, but there must be a reason for it, and we are not going to turn over all lands within the municipal boundaries to the municipalities for a variety of reasons, including that we don't know our needs for the future.
The City is required to establish a plan and let the government know about its long-term plans for land use. It does that. Then it makes the application. Certainly the Government of the Northwest Territories can identify its own needs within the boundary of the City of Yellowknife.
Does the Minister not recognize that by doing this piecemeal approach, that he is falsely inflating the cost of land and not, in fact, allowing the municipality to do good, quality, long-term planning?
I mentioned earlier that we don’t know our needs. Perhaps it was better phrased to say we don’t know all of our needs for the future. Some of them may not be fully mapped out yet. Again, on application, we can turn land over to the municipalities and have been doing so. I expect that procedure to continue. It seems rational and also following what the regulations state in the Commissioner’s land regulations. Again, applications can be made. They can be studied. If they are of merit, land can be turned over.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, will the Minister work with the appropriate administrative bodies at the City of Yellowknife to put in a greater land application so that the City of Yellowknife can acquire, while respecting interim land withdrawals and respecting the GNWT’s long-term needs, a greater land application to satisfy the city’s requirements for long-term planning and land use? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Member opposite has identified some issues that do arise. There are our needs. There are also sometimes, in some municipalities, interim land withdrawals. We are obviously always willing to work with the City of Yellowknife, and we look forward to working with them. Again, they can make application, and we can respond. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
