Michael McLeod

Mr. Speaker, the program was designed with checks and balances so communities can continue to have input on areas of concern. We have already heard some early promise of that capacity. I think overall in the area of O&M and capital, we have stabilized the investment in the communities that communities are comfortable with. We have spent a lot of work in the area of building capacity and staffing problems. We have developed an evaluation framework, and we will be bringing that forward for discussion and having the communities adopt it so we can do the review in the next little while.

I see we’ve moved away from the youth abroad program and we’ve entered another line of questioning.

Mr. Speaker, the integrated communities sustainable plans are something we’ve worked on together with the federal government. We felt in order for the communities to be able to become sustainable and to become self-sufficient, they need to develop a number of plans. They are working on energy plans, capital plans and innovative initiatives within the communities. I’d certainly be glad to share the information, and possibly share some of the models we’ve come out with, with the Member, Mr. Speaker...

The infrastructure committee has been meeting since this government was formed and cabinet was selected. We have a lot of work in front of us. There is some desire to have some recommendations brought forward. We need to review a lot of the policies. We’d have to upgrade some of the policies. We’d have to also develop new ones. I’m trying to be very careful not to make a commitment we may not live by, but I would suspect that we could start presenting some of the initial findings very soon, hopefully by the next sitting.

There have been very few projects brought forward to this government that are classified as P3. I believe there was one in Fort Smith many years ago. A lot of work was done in the area of policy development in and around P3 projects. The other one is the Deh Cho Bridge, of course. As we move forward, there needs to be more analysis done as the federal government has, as part of the building Canada plan, a funding initiative that’s referred to as the P3 models. We need to move forward if we’re going to access some of those dollars.

Mr. Chairman, the Member’s concerns have been raised by the members of LGANT, the Local Government Administrators of the Northwest Territories. They’ve also been brought forward by the N.W.T. Association of Communities.

One of the things that we’re trying to work out as we move forward on the discussions with the Building Canada Fund is how would the communities access the dollars that would be made available — whether it’s a formula funding process that we have now with the communities for the capital or would it be an application base so that we can enhance what they’re doing already and give...

There is a number of projects that we have approved to date. I believe the Member is asking for a listing of those projects. Those are the Behchoko sewer main replacement, the Behchoko water treatment plant, the Behchoko vault replacement, the Behchoko solid waste disposal site, the Inuvik woodbox utilidor replacement, the Norman Wells water storage tank replacement, the Yellowknife corrugated metal pipe replacement, Fort Simpson water and sewer main replacement, the Fort Smith Water Treatment Plant upgrade, the Hay River sewage treatment lagoon upgrade and the Fort Smith intake ground...

Mr. Speaker, as indicated earlier, we had an excellent partnership arrangement with Lutselk’e on this facility. The community had wanted to see this facility a lot bigger than what we had initially targeted to build in the community. They came up with some of their own funding from their own sources to increase the size, increase the footprint of this facility.

We haven’t worked directly with them to attract new dollars. We have worked with other communities such as Nahanni Butte to spend money on their gym, but in the community of Lutselk’e we haven’t. Not as a specific community but through...

Mr. Chairman, we have confirmation from our government that they will be going into two different areas: transportation and municipal assets. We have a process for the transportation side of it.

The unknown at this point is how the money would flow to the communities. Of course, that’s why we can’t put together any lists and bring it forward because we need to work out a number of things before we can move forward. And dealing with the communities, providing money to the municipalities for capital is one of the areas that we have to yet negotiate and work out.

Mr. Chairman, this whole initiative was put in place by the federal government with a budget of $16 million over five years. It increased by an additional $3 million over the life of those five years.

Although it doesn’t state it, the MRIF program is completed. It’s expected that the new Building Canada Fund will replace it in terms of providing funding for infrastructure to the communities. It would be very unlikely that they would accept a project that’s been approved through the MRIF process — that has an oversight committee that we have joint management on with the federal government, that...

Mr. Speaker, the quick answer to that is no. The evaluation is something we plan to do. At this stage it’s too early to go down and do the evaluations in the communities. We’d wait a little while longer before we start that.