Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. My first question is: two weeks ago my colleague from Nunakput asked the Minister to read the report "Focus for the Future" tabled by MACA on the last day of the last Assembly; has the Minister read the report? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My apologies to the Member. I have not read the report.
No. I appreciate the Minister's honesty on that one, and maybe we can do dinner and reading together. My next question is: what is the department planning to do moving forward to ensure that the figures reported on page 12 continue to be annually updated and provided to the NWT Association of Communities? Thank you.
We are meeting this weekend with the association of communities, and I will be meeting with the executive director to get a full briefing and to follow up and look for solutions and, going forward, to work with our municipal gap.
I am not sure if I understood if the figures would be updated on an annual basis. My next question is: what percentage of the annual $25-million funding gap does MACA anticipate will be covered by federal funding? The second part of that question is: how sustainable do we feel that relying on federal funding to cover the municipal funding gap is?
I don't have those answers right now. I will follow up with the Member, but I would like to also express that we are looking at initiatives at the community level and specifically looking at a land transfer for municipalities and working with them to try to work with the municipal gap that we currently have right now. Going forward with our priorities, we have set aside $5 million to work with that. Strategically, I will be working closely with my department, and I will have answers. I will follow up with the Member.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, I am definitely game to sit down with the Minister any time. One thing that I routinely have heard lately from my constituents is that the government seemed to very easily find the extra million dollars to cover the taxation error for the Stanton Territorial Hospital. It was a very expensive oversight that could have almost doubled the amount of funding that the mandate proposes to include to close the municipal funding gap over the next four years. I am wondering if the Minister will at least commit to including the rate of inflation in the $5-million mandate commitment for closing the funding gap? Thank you.
Unfortunately, I will have to follow up with the Member. Looking at the $1.5 million that we had paid out for a grant in lieu of property taxes, that came across as a surprise as the Stanton Hospital was constructed, but we did not forecast and we did not budget for that increase in property taxes. However, I will follow up with the Member. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
