Thanks, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs today in regards to the municipal funding gap.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the department works with the federal government to try to identify funding pots there. Unfortunately, it's a onetime shot that we were able to get money from the federal government, but it doesn't help shrink the funding gap.
The Member talked about looking at transferring land. We are working with the Department of Lands. We've reached out, developed a process that was looked at by the City of Yellowknife. They accepted it. So we are working with the City of Yellowknife to transfer land. Not bulk land, but small chunks to help them move forward. We're also move that process when we sent it to NWTAC and we are working with them to look at that as well as transferring that process to those small communities, including the taxbased communities besides Yellowknife. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, last week a colleague of mine tabled written questions in regards to the municipal funding gap specifically asking for the status of that gap and specifically also by community.
I'm wondering if the Minister responsible will commit to tabling actuals of the funding gap on an annual basis by community as this is a question that has come up annually since our term has begun. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it would be a process, and we are working on that. So whatever information we have we can share it with the committee. We could also table it moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And I'm sure that the Minister will appreciate less written questions for that one as well then in the future.
Mr. Speaker, my next question is in regards to support for municipalities. One of the things that we hear over and over again is that we have to decide where we're going to put our money as a government and that we have a very specific amount of money for new initiatives. The problem with that is that this is an invoice to the government from municipalities. This is money that we owe based on our own formula that currently exists. So this isn't new initiatives. This is simply paying our bills.
Right now, within the GNWT, we have over 5,000 employees. And so I'm wondering if the Minister of MACA will dedicate some of these employees from within his department that can specifically help source additional funding to increase the size of that pie and help municipalities access funding through the federal government, even if it is onetime funding, but a lot of times what we hear is that there just isn't the the same people available to do those funding agreements with the federal government in different organizations around the territory. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the community operation division is the one that works with us. Again, we have 15 staff there but it's not all 15 are allocated to that one specific topic. But the Member has to understand, and the people have to understand, this is a shared responsibility through other municipal and community affairs. Divisions, like the community governments, sport and rec and youth, corporate, but also other divisions which is Infrastructure and Finance. So it's a government approach to working trying to get funding from the federal government. We work together. It's just not one division specifically. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the municipal funding gap is something that you hear all Members talk about. And one thing I think that we can all agree is there's huge gains to be made by closing that gap from a community level. I'm wondering if the government will commit or when the government will commit to providing committee with a draft plan to reduce and address the municipal funding gap once and for all? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the department is working to update the funding policies in this fiscal year, 20222023. We were actually going to do 20232024. And we will review the data from the 2014 funding review as part of that process.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Monfwi.
