Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As we have heard and as we have deliberated through the MACA department, there is a lot going on within our department right now. As you know, a lot of our staff are currently down at the Canada Winter Games. I am sure that, once that slows down, we will be able to put more focus on the youth strategy, as well as getting that youth council together. Definitely, as soon as we get that information, we will be sharing it with committee. Thank you.

Once the residents raised the issue of the heating issues during the winter months, we did work with our professional engineers and our designers to address the issue. As I mentioned earlier, in-floor heating was the best solution to address the issue. We have done that, and as I mentioned, from my understanding, it has been completed. I will get an official confirmation for the Member. Moving forward, we will continue to assess the Joe Greenland building. I mean, it's providing a valuable service to our residents in the Beaufort-Delta, and we will continue to monitor that particular building.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Not through our department. That would be more through the Executive and Indigenous, with Indigenous government services. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I didn't know that the Member spoke for all of the communities across the Northwest Territories, first of all. Secondly, it is not about stimulating economy, it is about addressing core needs that our communities have. Filling in the gap, as I mentioned earlier, when we look at what those gaps are, it is really the bigger centres: Yellowknife, Hay River, Inuvik, Fort Smith. We also want to make sure that we take care of our smaller communities, Mr. Chair. The Member spoke on it, and the reality is where our economy is right now, what our revenues are right now in the GNWT...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, we do have a list of legislation through the department. Obviously, we want to prioritize them. We have one before standing committee right now, and it's something that I will continue to work on. As I mentioned, the department, we only have so many resources to do the work that we can. There is a list of legislation that needs to be done, and we are working on it. When we did get the mandates from the 18th Legislative Assembly, it did take away some of our resources to focus on getting this mandate done. At the same time, as you heard earlier, we are continuing to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We will be renewing the strategy for 2019-2020. Creating an NWT youth advisory group is one thing that we are looking at during this process. Obviously, it falls under one of our commitments. We do have funding that is in place for certain programs, as the Member is well aware, obviously, the Children and Youth Resiliency Program, Regional Youth Sports Events, working with our youth centres, Youth Corps, Youth Contributions Program. This is something that we are definitely going to be working on with our partners in terms of developing a strategy moving forward. We want...

Addressing the financial needs of community governments is a long-term project that has to include clearly understanding what exactly those needs are and how effective our policies are in meeting them. That is why, Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories did a comprehensive review of its community government funding policies in 2014. The review was initiated, in part, because existing funding policies were difficult to understand and defend, in terms of the amount of funding any one community received. In addition, there was no direct linkage between the operations and...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, this is something that we are working on. Obviously, we want to make sure that anyone who accesses 911, we have their address in place. We are working with communities currently to address these needs. As 911 is, hopefully, going to come through, we are making sure that our residents are more than, I wouldn't say happy, but that their concerns will be met. That is something that we are working on right now, yes. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As a government, we have a lot of priorities. You look at every department that we are having discussions with, whether it's Health and Social Services, Education, Housing, and, our partnerships that we have with MACA. This is something that we have been working on since 2014. As I have mentioned, Mr. Chair, I have had chats with the executive of the NWTAC and have a good understanding that this is something that is going to be hard to fix in terms of the funding gap, but we have made some really significant improvements in terms of the work that has been done to address...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Since I have been in the role as the Minister of MACA, I have had pretty good discussions with the executive of the NWTAC. I have told them that we have got to work together to get this addressed.

At the same time, our staff have been taking on some administrative roles for some of the municipalities because they aren't able to find SAOs or find people that can do financial work for them. That takes away from the work that we do at the department level, and it is something that I have been pushing. We need to make sure that the resources that our municipal governments have...