Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s my pleasure to share with colleagues some of the positive results that have been realized to date in the first year after the formal implementation of the New Deal for NWT Community Governments.

Implemented April 1, 2007, the New Deal is designed to provide communities with increased authority in decision making on capital projects. Designed in partnership between the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs and community governments, the initiative reflects a huge shift in our government’s approach to planning, designing and implementing community public...

Mr. Speaker, our fiscal reality, of course, is driving this. We have a huge infrastructure deficit. I think at last count, general estimations were well over $1 billion. As Members look at our capital budget of $140-some million, along with carry-over debt, it comes out to $200 million. It’s going to be tough to deal with that infrastructure. We have to do our business more efficiently. We have to have checks and balances in our capital process. BIP seems to have caught everybody’s eye and ear. I think we have to really look at what we’re planning to do. The Premier said fairly clearly in his...

Thank you. That is a very good question and a difficult one to answer. I guess it would depend on how much consultation is going to be required. Our target, from our committee, is to have a lot of these things come into play next year. We wanted to have some very good discussion with the committee about our recommendations, and we actually had hoped we would have the possibility of agreement to move our capital-approval process —that has been mentioned by the Premier — to the fall, which would allow us to start planning approval of capital projects in our fall session rather than in February...

Mr. Speaker, I haven’t personally spoken to any of the associations. ITI has talked to a couple of organizations. The Premier has also, I believe, had some feedback from organizations and businesses. It was mentioned in the previous address, and it’s something we feel we need to do. We need to visit, at this point, the way we’re conducting business. It’s really providing a lot of challenges. In our infrastructure committee we have provided, I think, 14 recommendations. This one’s getting a lot of attention.

Having said that, we have to recognize that just about 80 per cent of our tenders that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I’m not sure if it’s a perception that’s not quite correct out there, but there seems to be an assumption that we’ve eliminated the BIP. At this point our recommendation to Cabinet has been that we suspend a portion of the BIP and that the BIP policy will stay in place. We are recommending that a portion not apply, and that is the portion that affects the capital projects. ITI will be taking that out for further discussion. We intend to have further discussion on all our recommendations with committee, and there needs to be a further involvement from the...

As I indicated earlier, we do have reviews built into most of our formula funding and most of our program-delivery funding that require us to review the allocation dollars. We have more recently embarked on an initiative to have all communities provide us with long-term sustainability plans. These include a number of different areas where they would provide us with information on their capital needs. For example, rather than us as a government providing a five-year infrastructure plan, the communities would compile theirs, including how they plan to finance it. Energy plans are part of that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We provide money to the communities through a number of key programs in three key areas. Those areas, of course, are operations and maintenance, community/public infrastructure, and water and sewer services. Eighty per cent of our budget in Municipal and Community Affairs flows to the communities. On top of that, we also have a number of federal programs that we have joint, co-management agreements with. That is the gas tax program, and we’re still working on the Building Canada Fund, of course. That comes in at around $82 million that we provide to the communities on...

The over-a-billion-dollar deficit I mentioned didn’t include the Deh Cho bridge or the Mackenzie Valley road. I would commit to the Members, and I think all my committee colleagues would commit, that we would share the information with the Regular Members on where we plan to go and the decisions we’re moving toward as the information comes in. Through ITI or with our work with the FMB we will commit to doing that and provide it to the committee and keep them updated.

Mr. Speaker, the Member knows full well that’s a very difficult area to measure. We will do some analysis, but whether or not we can measure the out-migration and take our best guess — I don’t know if we can go that far. We will do the analysis; that’s what we’re embarking on right now, and we will have ITI do some of that work.

We certainly concur with the Member’s recommendations. We intend to look at all the information provided up to now, and a number of us would agree; we’ve looked at this a number of times now. However, we have to face the reality that there is a cry out there to deal with this issue again. There are a number of companies and organizations that don’t feel it’s time to do this, but we have to review all the information — review and hear what people have to say. We have to share it with the committee and provide all that feedback to our own infrastructure committee to look at and make the final...