Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think it was maybe last year or the year before, we did have a bit of an increase in this fund. I think we’re up to $400,000 now, as the Member mentioned. It’s fully subscribed to. We have a number of communities that are taking us up on this. It could help with equipment. However, I think the communities’ priority is to provide training, and I think we’ve been working with Transportation to provide some first responder training.

It is a program that is fully subscribed to and we are making some progress on this again. There are options there to help the communities with...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To my right I have Mr. Mark Warren, deputy minister of lands. To my left, I have Brenda Hilderman. She is the director of finance, Department of Lands.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. A considerable amount of work has been done on this. I think we have requested some time with committee to provide them an update as to some of the work that we’re doing. Thank you.

I am pleased to present the 2015-2016 Main Estimates for the Department of Lands. Overall, the department's estimates propose an increase of $2.438 million, or 9 percent, over the 2014-2015 Main Estimates.

Highlights of the proposed estimates include:

$2.8 million in new initiatives. These initiatives are funded from the reserve set aside by this Assembly for devolution impacts identified after the 2014-2015 Main Estimates were considered by this Assembly. These initiatives include:

$1.006 million for the new liabilities and financial assurances division to manage and coordinate the financial...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Right before committee I think there was support there for our desire to add next an extra person on. As you heard from Mr. Schauerte, we’ve re-profiled one of our positions to help deal with this so we can take care of some of the backlog as far as legislation goes and be as current as possible. We had the support of committee. Again, because of fiscal constraint, we were unable to get the position at this time, so we re-profiled internally. Thank you.

That is a loaded question. I think it was felt that with our experience in dealing with the voluntary sector that it would be a good fit in MACA. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have, to my left, Mr. Tom Williams, deputy minister, Municipal and Community Affairs. To my right I have Mr. Gary Schauerte, who is our director of corporate services, Municipal and Community Affairs. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, we do work closely with the Aboriginal governments. We have a website that’s up talking about unauthorized occupancy on Territorial lands. It’s actually a very good website and I would encourage folks out there to go on it. It’s on the Lands website. It talks about the 190 documented unauthorized occupants that have transferred to the GNWT. The bulk of them, again, are in and around the North Slave Yellowknife area. We have 167. We have one in the Sahtu. We have nine in Deh Cho and 13 in Fort Smith. The website actually is a very good source of information. It will answer a lot of...

I believe I said it’s been in place for about three years now while we’re doing the work for the first part of it through Municipal and Community Affairs, as we’re doing the rec leasing policy framework. So we are anticipating that we’ll be done by mid-2016.

We have to identify a lot of areas within the focus area. We are looking at opportunities to possibly release some lots for leasing because these lots are developed and are within developed areas. We are looking at that possibility. We are expecting to make an announcement very soon on whether that’s going to go ahead or not. So, there will...

The intent of not taking any applications at all is so we can concentrate on the focus area and what it can sustain. I take the Member’s point, though, about just taking applications and not processing them and I take her point and I’ll have a discussion with officials. We need to make sure that we’re able to concentrate on the work at hand, get the rec policy framework done and then we can move forward in trying to identify potential spots in the focus area for possible lease opportunities. This is a huge issue right in the focus area because that’s where the greatest demand is. Across the...