Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. MACA is aware of the situation in Sachs Harbour regarding the capital project that they put together. There are some outstanding issues that the community has to deal with, working with the consultant and the contractor. My understanding is they’re starting to deal with those issues as we speak and, hopefully, we’ll have a positive resolution here for the Member soon. Thank you.

We’ll continue to work with the communities and ensure that they are looking at building the highest standard. I would hesitate to go as far as imposing it on them. I mean, we can encourage and support them and we’ve tried to devolve a lot of the responsibility of local infrastructure. We’re able to do that with, as the Member mentioned, the Housing Corporation, and we’re able to do that because we basically control the capital dollars so we can impose standards on them as far as the communities go.

I’ll stick to my guns and say that I’m absolutely confident. The communities know best for...

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Monday, November 2, 2009, I will move that Bill 5, An Act to Amend the Commissioner’s Land Act, be read for the first time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Some of the communities have applied for Building Canada money for specific projects that they’ve identified in their communities. For example, I think Aklavik used their portion of it for the new sewage lagoon and they matched the dollars and some of the dollars came from BCP. They’ve also identified some money for road upgrades through the economic stimulus fund. So the communities will let us know what their priorities are and we continue to work with them on capital plans.

As far as Mr. Aumond said, we’ve shared findings of the report with the communities and we...

The Member is twisting my arm to get me into Aklavik, but I will make that commitment that I will make it into the Member’s community. With that, we probably will have staff. We’ll leave the chequebooks in Inuvik and then we’ll...Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Lutselk’e is forming a development corporation. They are not, as far as I know, making any attempt to become a settlement or a hamlet. They are looking into forming a development corporation so the money could start flowing to them. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, a lot of the programs that we have applications that have come through for the Building Canada Fund, I have yet to see any application from the community. Maybe we should encourage them to put an application in with some of their requirements, and then we can go and look to access some of the money. If there’s money available for doing some research, then we can pursue that too. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate the Member’s comments. He’s absolutely correct with the infrastructure that we’re putting in the community. I think the department has taken the lead in trying to get as many community people trained as possible. It’s an initiative that we’re quite proud of and I think we’re seeing a lot of positive results come out of this. So I thank the Member again for his comments.

By soon…I have to remember to do that when I’m responding to the Members’ questions, because I always leave myself open for that. So in the future I will come up with a specific date; November 25th, 2009, type of thing. So I will follow up with the department and see where we’re at with this. Hopefully, if there’s an opportunity to get this out within the next month, then I would commit to doing that.

There’s always opportunity for input into some of the things we’re doing. We are proposing an LP come forward between now and the May/June session, so we can introduce the bill in May/June and...

Obviously, all our water treatment plants meet the Canadian standards for drinking water. Then we’ll have to, I think, deal with the wastewater potential being imposed on us when we come to it. I’m not quite sure where that’s at right now. So we’re monitoring that quite closely to see if they decide to impose that on us, then I think we’d have to have a serious discussion as the Legislative Assembly and with the federal government as to the funding for these new sewage treatment plants. It’s going to be awfully expensive for one of our smallest communities like Kakisa with 42 people to be...