Caroline Cochrane

We have been working closely with the municipalities, and especially the City of Yellowknife, because it is a primary interest to the City of Yellowknife. We have not deviated from our timeline. We told them right through over a year ago that we would be introducing a legislative proposal in this sitting and that the bill would be introduced in the House in the May/June sitting. We are still on that timeline.

Every community has different needs. Every community has different infrastructure needs. Some of them are more up-to-date than others. During their capital planning process, that is the time that each community identifies which of their infrastructure projects are reaching the end of life and which ones we need to support, then, in obtaining federal infrastructure money so that they can meet the infrastructure needs within their individual communities.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The role of Municipal and Community Affairs is to support communities as best as possible. When it comes to water and waste water, we provide annual funding to the communities to develop it. We support them in developing their annual capital planning process. That planning process actually usually guides the communities to develop strategies for long-term projects such as a water treatment plant or big infrastructure projects. Then, once that has gone through that process, we will support the hamlets and communities in actually looking at what federal funding they can...

Like I had stated earlier, prioritizing, we have already met with the chief. We are waiting for him to come back with a proposal to us on how he will provide the work. I should also state that there are six other homes on the reserve that have sat empty for over a decade. It is a sin, Mr. Speaker.

The reason they have sat empty is because of land tenure. It has always been an issue that the land belonged to the federal government and so we could not get it. These buildings were new, sitting empty, with people needing homes, so not only are we looking at the public housing. We are also looking...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Currently, the properties, the 10 units that we're talking about, three of them are occupied and seven need repairs. We have actually met with Chief Fabian, January 19th, actually, when my department went down to talk to him, and there are a couple of things we're doing with it. It's really exciting. Like I stated many times in this House, each community has different needs when it comes to housing, so we're looking at my community housing plans. Part of that was working with Chief Fabian, so with the 10 public housing units that are on reserve land, there have always...

Currently, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs provides $8.3 million for sport and recreation programs. That includes $4.7 million from the Western Canada Lottery Fund revenues and $3.6 million from the Government of the NWT operation funding for Municipal and Community Affairs.

Mr. Speaker, yes, the proposed bill that was submitted to standing committee does have a clause in it that allows the dispersal of funds to cover multi-sport games. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As stated, we do try to support local labour, whenever possible; sometimes it's not doable. We have committed. I mean, we do learn from previous mistakes; we're trying to better the programs so that people have better access to housing and better work experiences. So there are some things we're doing. We're doing a community initiative program that works with Aboriginal and municipal governments, in partnership, to deal with issues in their community; everybody having something in the pot. We are looking at individual community plans, such as we've done with Fort Good Hope, which was one of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the NWT Housing Corporation does use the BIP process as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

No. The department doesn't consider funding provided through the youth programs as sports and recreation funding. Those are treated as separate budgets and have separate program delivery.