Robert C. McLeod

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...

One of the questions in the consultation/discussion paper was around the issue of residency requirements and a lot of the folks that did respond did say that there needed to be some adjustments made to the residency requirement issues. So this was taken into consideration and then we will be preparing a report to present to Members. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member’s comment. We are constantly, when we do meet with our federal counterparts, we are always mentioning the fact that they do flow a lot of money into the Territories. We need to start looking at the O and M, because there are a lot of projects going on the ground, so we need to increase the O and M funding. I think we all know that there has been an increase in the O and M for the last couple of years, recognizing the fact that they are getting a lot of new infrastructure on the ground. We will continue to work with the communities and will...

I will give direction to staff to work with the community of Sachs Harbour to assist them in trying to resolve some of the issues and see where they can improve. There’s still the issue of compliance with the Fire Code. Those have been identified and those need to be taken care of before they will issue a completion of this project. Thank you.