EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
When the municipal government was set up, they do not have adequate funding and what I think of it is that they only seem to hire staff at their department level and the communities are restricted in obtaining their needs and resources.
We always have to fight to access funds to operate these Hamlets.
What I have often thought of that situation is that, what James touched on earlier, $13 million for compensation and benefits, I think I can say when the Department of Education dissolved their regional boards to have more funds for their department so did Health with the dissolution of their health boards so that they can save money.
Let’s get rid of those departmental staff and funnel those funds to the communities where it really matters.
I feel I can say that, I feel justified in saying that because when we ask for funds from the department there are so many barriers and with that in mind you would think that in the future we really have to look at how we run our affairs within government.
Our communities that we represent in Nunavut, the 26 communities that are run through Hamlets, we give them the responsibilities to run the affairs within the community.
We try to base it on the needs; we need to give them better resources that are adequate to operate within the communities according to the responsibilities.
That should be a priority for the government.
A lot of employees in the communities, when they request, they give it to the certain department and it given the run around, they get referred to say a fourth person and then the finally know, no, they can’t access those funds and the whole meaning of accessing funds becomes really meaningless.
That is how the department is seen as at the local level.
They’re always looking for barriers to make it hard for the communities to access these funds.
That’s what I see them as.
Their mandate seems to be all over the place when it should be only to benefit these communities.
Many communities want better infrastructure, arenas, community centres, but there are many barriers.
They are told, we’ll give it to you in so many years, meanwhile all the funding id being used up through compensation and benefits for it’s employees and that is a very big concern.
I am proud of the hard work that the Departmental staff does, but at the same time, they make it too hard for these communities and set up barriers for these communities.
These staff members make it hard for the Hamlets to access the resources needed.
And that is very disappointing because there is a lot of room for improvement, Mr. Chairman, that is how I see it is there is a lot of room for improvement and that is how I want to see it as we want solutions for this problem and I have been through that experience before so that is why I am speaking about it.
Next on my list is Mr. Alakannuark.
Welcome to the Minister and the staff.
Regarding the Hamlets in our communities are trying their best to operate these Hamlets.
But there are a lot more solutions that need to be worked on, which could be worked on if more funds were brought into the communities.
They really have their hands tied when they feel they can do more, but given the financial constraints, they have no way of doing it.
Although I am grateful for the work that they are doing, I think there has to be a better review in how the funding is structured to these Hamlets and how and why they run into deficit situations more often than not.
With those said, I am not putting anybody down in speaking like this, but these communities run into deficit situations no matter how hard they try.
For instance, in some, it might be due to a lack of training in financial management or when they are operating these Hamlets, it is really hard for these Hamlets.
I have been through that situation myself and I am sure my community is not the one that goes through these difficult situations and we have to look at how these Hamlets can be better run with the adequate resources because I am sure that they try to be as prudent in their financial management as possible, but because they are never adequate, they end up running into these deficits.
The Mayors in these communities try their best to try and not run into deficit.
There has to be a review on how this Department funds those Hamlets and how financial management could be made a priority for these Hamlets.
I know funding will not always be coming our way, but we have to figure out ways to support these Hamlets in running their own affairs.
Anybody else, any comments?
Mr. Havioyak: I have a short comment to make here.
I am hearing good news so far from the Minister from yesterday and today regarding recreation in the communities, for Nunavut communities, wherever they go to play games somewhere, I’m glad that these young people are given the opportunity to go play somewhere and I’m glad to see that this is happening in Nunavut.
Regarding recreation, I would like to speak at little bit about this.
When we were in Pangnirtung, I had mentioned July 9, maybe in the last ten years, we’ve had our land claims agreement.
We signed the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement ten years ago.
I would like to see some games, the sports that Inuit had, centres that are, it should be taught to the young people today.
Before we leave this session, for these people that are coming, the people from Alaska, Greenland and Northwest Territories, and also, Nunavik, they will be coming.
The people that are preparing these games are looking for games that will be held on July 9th so that the games can go ahead.
They are seeking funding to fund these games this summer on July 9th.
The games that are prepared already, but the Greenland, Alaska and Northwest Territories are coming to Kugluktuk this summer and they are looking forward to the games this summer in Kugluktuk, July 9th so that the young people can enjoy their activities.
When young people are looking forward to the future, they seem to enjoy life and prevent them from getting into problems.
I would like to see some funding coming to these games that are going to be held. I would like to see that funding be prepared for the games for this summer.
Within five years, maybe ten years that we will be having games every five or ten years but they will be playing these games in different communities.
During the summer there will be games being held this summer.
I would like to see permanent funding being funded within five to ten years that we have these funding available wherever they’re going to be holding northern games.
And also, that item I wanted to bring, regarding search and rescue.
These search and rescue operations work very hard for the communities.
Whoever gets lost in some communities, they need to have search rescue operations because they have very little funding to operate when search rescue is in operation.
They have lack funds because they have to save these for people that need funding to operate search and rescues.
They have to create their own funding, and the whole thing was to make their own funding to do search and rescues.
I would like to see some funding improvement being made for search and rescue, because the gas prices are very high, and food to do their search and rescue.
As you know, a lot of the search and rescue are volunteers and they use their own money to do search and rescue.
I would like to see improvements from Nunavut Government to have proper funding for search and rescue operations.
I think that we need to set up an area where there is permanent funding being made available to the search and rescue operations for the communities.
Today, it is not too bad, but these search and rescue organizations raise their own funding so that they will be able to do their own search and rescue operations.
I would like to see improvements from Community Government and Transportation to help these search and rescue operations.
The last item that I wanted to bring about regarding Hamlets, in Kugluktuk, they have been in a deficit for the last one or two years.
They were having problems operating their Hamlets because ran into a deficit.
I know that their funding is reduced because if their deficit.
But today, it is not enough.
Today it is just not enough to operate the Hamlet organizations. I know that it is hard to get funding but we need improve the funding for the Hamlets, as you have heard from the Members here.
I think that there needs to be more funding for the Hamlets to operate their organizations.
Since there is a lack of funding for the Hamlets, they have a big problem operating their organizations.
The Recreation Complex was finished last year, the Hockey Arena in Kugluktuk was finished last year and we really appreciate that it is finished.
It created a deficit for the Hamlet of Kugluktuk because the original one burned down and today they are running into a deficit.
The complex is being used by the community and it creates recreation for the young people in our community.
It is not only for the young people, but the elders and people use that complex daily.
I want to ask when the time is right.
The Hamlet of Kugluktuk is in deficit because they had to finish that complex.
How can we get more funding because the Hamlet of Kugluktuk has run into deficit due to that problem?
I will ask more questions as to how we can reduce that deficit.
I will be asking some more questions later on.
At this time I will stop for now.
I have no one else on my list. Mr. Tootoo.
Mr. Chairman. I’ll try and keep my comments brief.
I don’t have planned all that to say to the Minister’s staff other than I think over the last year I’d like to commend and thank the Minister for, as she had indicated in her opening comments, they’ve had challenges to accomplish it’s mandate to work in partnerships with municipal governments.
I think that the department and the Minister made some great strides in their efforts to work with the City of Iqaluit to resolve some of their infrastructure problems that they face.
The new Cities, Towns and Villages Act, there were some positive things, amendments and changes in there to clarify if you want the authority and the power that the City and the Hamlets have.
I think that goes a long way in showing the true effort in trying to promote empowerment at the local level.
That’s an important path that the government, and I think that’s something that other departments should be looking at, powers that they can devolve down to the municipalities.
This not only creates employment opportunities in decentralized communities, but all the communities and I think that’s an important way to look at it.
Other than that, just going back to the department allowing the City to come up with its own plans.
The whole municipal zoning plan was done by the City of Iqaluit and I know that they look forward to the continued support from the department in that area in helping them achieve what they want to achieve for the City.
I don’t have too much else to say, but again, I just wanted to commend the Minister and her department for the work in that area, especially here with the City of Iqaluit, also with other communities as well.
I’ll make my comments really brief.
In my community, the Hamlet does not particularly give me any concerns to bring with me.
But there are some solutions regarding those requests for capital funds.
I'm sure they will be supporting the community of Pond Inlet in it’s wishes to improve the lives of its residents through these capital projects.
I’d like to thank that Minister, when the communities run into problems; they’re very open and have set up programs to start dealing with some of the problems within municipal governments regarding funding.
At this time I have no other names on my list.
We can now move on.
You will be given an opportunity to ask questions.
If you have no questions, we can start going page by page.
I have a question to the opening comments made by the Minister of Community Government & Transportation.
It’s on page 2 and it’s the third paragraph.
In regards to the two fires, it is stated here that there has been a dramatic increase in the insurance premiums estimated to be between $4 and 6 million dollars.
I would like to ask the Minister what the premiums were prior to the fire and whether these premiums are going to stabilize some time afterwards?
It was $2 million dollars prior to the fires but Mr. Chairman, Shawn has been negotiating with Nunavut Association of Municipalities and the insurance industry representatives.
The negotiations are still ongoing and Mr. Chairman, he has been working on this for a long time and he could give you a more detailed report on the progress.
If we could give him the opportunity I would like to get Mr. Maley to give you the details as to the question.
Chairperson (interpretation): Because of the change, we would like you to introduce your officials first.
Hon. Manitok Thompson (interpretation): Mr. Chairman, I have Mr. Kunuk and Mr. Maley who are told to be available as they have different responsibilities.
If I didn’t give you the details, I just want Mr. Maley to be here and I would like him to respond to Mr. Arvaluk’s question, if I didn’t give enough detail.
To give you a quick update on the insurance situation with our Nunavut municipalities, just to explain, historically this insurance program, which covers the municipalities, for their insurance coverage each year, has never been a government program.
For the last ten years, it’s been a program that has been solely own and operated by the municipalities themselves.
Starting in 1999, and onwards, with the September 11, crisis, and the changing global economy, insurance became much more expensive and as a result, our government, the Government of Nunavut, was asked to participate in assisting in off-setting the increasing costs of premiums.
Initially, our contribution was $400 thousand dollars to off-set municipality’s costs.
And then it moved up to $800 thousand dollars last year.
So, last year, the government was paying $800 thousand dollars to municipalities for paying $1.2 million dollars with their own money for a total premium cost of roughly $2 million dollars.
This was in a program that was partnered with the Northwest Territories Association of Communities.
By partnering with them, they were able to reduce their premiums because risk was spread out with a greater number of communities.
However, this year, with the Repulse Bay fire, and also the Clyde River fire, it has thrown the Nunavut Municipal insurance program into a crisis.
We were asked and we quickly jumped in to assist them in terms of trying to figure out how we were going to manage this problem.
So, in partnership with Nunavut Association of Municipalities, we hired a consultant to explore the situation with us.
We’ve gone out to the insurance industry and solicited a price for insurance to purchase at the same price that we did this year, which is basically the same insurance you would purchase for you house, if you’re buying traditional insurance.
Industry has come back and said to us that we can no longer afford to do that.
Insurance costs this year, as the Minister referred to in her opening statement is going to increase between $4 and 6 million dollars in premium costs.
That for us is unaffordable, so what we’ve initiated is a self insured program.
This program is going to require partnership from the government and although, no decision has yet been made in terms of cost, there is a general recognition that we are going to have to assist in these values in setting this program up.
At the end of the day, this program will become solely owned and operated by Nunavut Municipalities.
The Government is going to have to assist in helping this self insurance program grow and eventually, over five or six years with some good risk management, as the Minister touched down in terms of the fire loss prevention strategy and good risk in lost property control Municipalities will be able to operate their insurance program and not be subject to premium increases based on global insurance costs.
So, I think the Minister has directed the staff in a very constructive direction in terms of doing this and we look forward to reporting back to the Assembly in the near future in terms of where we actually end up with this.
Mr. Arvaluk: On page 3, second paragraph, that the other strategy for training for community volunteers and the Minister says, at the appropriate time, she will table a new strategy in this House.
We have approximately, if all things go well, approximately two days left.
When is the appropriate time in this case?
I will be tabling the strategy in June.
Mr. Arvaluk: On the same page, third paragraph, that there is a plan for community empowerment as a priority in her Department.
Do you have a schedule as to what empowerment programs will be negotiated with the Municipalities, if it is successful; will that decrease PYs requirement within the Department?
We’re not going to decrease our empowerment, our staff for helping our communities.
What we have done is we are training the SAOs and the secretary and the finance officers and maintenance workers, the sewage truck drivers.
We are putting in place, training programs for these individuals and we need the regional staff and the headquarter staff to coordinate these programs and also that we can empower our communities that way.
So, when we are talking about empowerment, you may understand it in terms of putting equipment on the ground or putting extra people from my regional Office into the communities.
What we are doing here is that we are doing new Municipal training programs with our communities so that they can have trained staff in the communities.
A lot of cases, we have staff that have been hired and that did not get training for the specific job in those communities.
And we have seen that across the territory, where we have hired beneficiaries to take on the SAO roles without any training.
And this is how we are empowering our communities.
I completely misunderstood that paragraph and thank you for clarifying it.
That the empowerment was transferring more responsibility like Social Services and Housing Association to Municipalities.
Thank you, for clarifying it.
On the forth paragraph, that Municipal operating assistance contribution program has increased and your statement also by $3 million, 836 dollars.
What is the criteria for distributing that to the communities?
We put it at 16 and half percent and that’s a little over $3 million.
This is quite a mouthful Mr. Chairman.
One is the budgetary, the third paragraph, one is the budgetary challenge we meet within our means, staff within the department.
Consultation with stakeholders, I believe that is the Hamlet councils.
If we look at a total and I'm not trying to go page by page Mr. Chairman, I'm just going to use 7-4 as an example in your budget.
Compensation and Benefits for your department, for the government employees only, $13 million, 291 thousand.
Is that a fair assessment, a fair budget for 30 small communities to assist them in running their Hamlets, or will that be included in the program review that the government is positioning to do?
Thirteen percent going to my staff benefits is pretty good I think and it can be included in the program review but I can’t do without the staff that are in there already.
That would be $0.13 of every dollar for the staff.
I think that is pretty good.
My last point, not really a question but more of a comment.
I could understand if the department was like Education or Public Works and Services or something like that, have sole responsibility of the work for the government, or for programs of the government.
But in this case, they are two tiered responsibility, that is one is in the community level, the Hamlets, truly elected like us, that want to have independence in looking after their affairs.
But if you distribute $99 million, 248 dollars to the 26 communities on the basis of their proportions, they would have increased their responsibility more squarely than the elected members of the Hamlet council.
I'm just using that as an example.
Whereas other programs like emergency, Coast Guard and others that are not the responsibility of the Hamlets could be retained with a very small department like Culture, Language, Elders and Youth that would free up a whole lot of money for what the community really wants to do.
Mr. Kattuk’s arena and things like that, I think imaginative review of the department will have to be done with your good staff so that fair portions of all contributions, we understand from our own experience from government that we rely very heavily on the federal government for our total budget.
Municipalities is like wise, are, I don’t what the Federal Government take as their staff requirements for the purposes of transferring federal funds to Government of Nunavut.
I guess, what I’m saying is that more than half of your total budget is for your department to look after, whatever that may be.
And a whole lot of these programs in your budget are recreation contribution, community development funds and all require PYs in your department.
If we could say, let’s transfer all that in equal proportions to 26 municipalities, then you will not require these PYs in your department.
I don’t know how it can be done but I think this merits careful review as to where we can be more efficient according to your statement in your opening statement within our needs.
I will get John Welch to respond.
(interpretation end) We put in 55 percent of the budget for contributions and grants straight to the hamlets.
I remember when I became the Public Works and Services Minister; I just had three staff when we started in 1999.
I couldn’t do the Public Works and Services with three staff; one executive secretary, one Assistant Deputy Minister and one Deputy Minister; that was my headquarters department in Public Works.
Just to give you an example.
The regional staff are very close to the communities.
The communities appreciate each and every one of them.
I couldn’t tell you which one I would cut so that that office is useless.
Each one of my staff are very useful to the communities and are much appreciated.
I have asked my staff to live within the means and they’ve done a good job on that.
We do more than half the budget, given to the hamlets, in terms of grants and contributions and also their municipal operating money.
I think we have hired staff that are able to do their jobs and I couldn’t tell you which ones I would get rid of unless my Deputy Minister is a specialist in engineering and finance and policy and we’d be working all night and all day doing all those jobs.
I would welcome a review to the department to tell us where to cut and which staff to get rid of but I can tell you right now, the communities appreciate the expertise we have in our areas.
Mr. Arvaluk: Mr. Chairman, the Minister raises more questions.
The example I will use is that you have a good relationship with Iqaluit municipality.
You give them a block funding for capital.
For every other hamlet, you have determined if they need water truck, fire truck, sewage truck, dump truck.
Inuit in that hamlet may require you have a PY to review that rather than treating it like Iqaluit with block funding for capital for example.
When you start giving block funding, on an annual basis, which will free up a whole lot of planning from the headquarters or regional office, then the municipalities will determine for themselves what they really need through the block funding.
That’s the point I was trying to make.
I believe in block funding communities.
And actually in the last tail end of the last government, I tried a pilot project for Kivalliq Communities.
It was called Kivalliq Block Funding committee and it consisted of seven mayors.
We could have done that and I still believe it’s an idea that needs to be looked at closely.
I think that we should block fund by region.
Then the mayors can talk about their own five year capital plans amongst themselves and have more flexibility with the funds.
I still believe in that concept but at the time when I introduced it as a Kivalliq pilot project, which was a block fund to the whole region, it was shot down by Nunavut Implementation Commission.
They didn’t like it at that time because we were just developing the government.