Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we have a total of roughly $7.5 million in our budget to start working on the deferred maintenance issues. We plan to have that as an ongoing program. This amount would give us the ability to deal with around ten buildings per year.

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...

Mr. Speaker, I’m sure the aboriginal governments would certainly let us know if they perceived this to be a watering down of their rights. Actually, I will do further exploration on it. There’s no intention to step away from any of the agreements or responsibilities. That information has yet to be compiled.

I think we’ve been doing quite a bit of that over the last couple of years as we have undertaken the New Deal initiative. We would certainly be happy to share our information with the Member. If there is anything he feels we’ve missed, we certainly can look at providing that information. It’s difficult to say that we would embark on another complete review of all the communities at this point. It’s something I would hesitate to do.

Historically, a number of governments have worked on improving the standard of living in the communities and the programs to the community governments. I can recall being involved in a committee in the 15th Assembly, the Committee on Non-Tax-Based Community Affairs, and we made several recommendations at that time. Whenever we work with the communities to develop formulas, we take into consideration the unique circumstances that face, especially, the smaller communities. Our O&M formulas include the northern cost index. We have a commitment to review programs on a five-year basis. We certainly...

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...