Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, seeing that the NHL is officially off for the rest of the year, I would like to give an update of some of our own home-grown talent in the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, back in December, December 17th to the 19th, the First Nations Cup was held here in Yellowknife and Inuvik sent down a team into the masters division, which is I think a better name than old timers. I must say that the Inuvik Ice Devils showed remarkable gamesmanship and won the masters division and took home a fair bit of hardware as well, Mr. Speaker. I feel even better saying this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am aware that the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs is doing a review of community funding and how that’s structured. Once that work is done, we will look at what we can do as a government. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as a government, for any agreement we enter into with other jurisdictions, other governments, municipalities, the transfer of funds with NGOs, we do enter into multi-year funding, but it is based on the fact that we have a cycle that we follow that every year has to be approved by the Legislative Assembly. So we can’t put an unconditional grant in place where for nine years they can do things or for three years. We have set up block funding agreements on a three-year basis with municipalities so they could do better planning, but that is also conditional...

Mr. Speaker, just to highlight some of the hardware we took home; besides taking home the championship trophy for the masters division we had the most valuable player, who was also the top goalie, our goalie, Mr. Tom Williams.

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He happens to be with us today. I shared the top defenseman with another player from a team locally.

---Laughter

So, Mr. Speaker, again congratulations to those boys, and we’re looking forward again to coming back and making a trip down to Yellowknife for the Balsillie Cup. Thank you.

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Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, our process as the Government of the Northwest Territories is through the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs. They work with our community governments throughout the Northwest Territories, so there is contact there. Once this review is done, we will look at it and see if we have to make changes overall as a government. Thank you.

Maybe the Member can answer for me where the nine months comes from. An agreement is signed April to March, so the funding is known for that year but the planning cycles may be somewhat different. So if I could get some clarification there, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I believe this exercise we’re doing is about making sure that we’re doing the job right. That’s the first stage we were involved in, in a sense, is getting the mechanics right. Making sure that the organization, the design job descriptions are fitting and able to work well. Then as we go through that and develop that, the second phase of that would be the policy end, how things need to work together and get that end together. That’s definitely where we’re going to be needing the input of Members, to ensure that we’re on the right footing as we go forward.

I believe that...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as the program is laid out now, anybody who has a household that is paying higher than the Yellowknife base rate, as we call it, would qualify for a subsidy. So elders, if they have their own home and their rate is higher than the Yellowknife rate would qualify for subsidy. If there are other problems around income and not being able to afford that, then we have some other programs within government that could be looked into. But specifically in this area as it would apply today, elders would be a part of the package when you look at the existing...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the difference the Member is speaking to is that in that year the budgeting was done to support the self-government process that we were involved with from the department, and it has changed since then. The demand for us to be at all the tables, and we found that the travel portion of it wasn’t required at that amount and it’s also accounted somewhat differently. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I agree with what the Member stated around the area of our technology and the enhancements and changes that have come as a result of that. At one time, when computers first came out, there was much discussion about how they would make our lives much easier. We haven’t found that to be the case. There are continuing changes and programs and platforms that we must adapt to and make necessary changes. As a government, we’re working and trying to stay updated on those things. For example, government-wide, we spend approximately $5 million a year in the area of...