Support to Communities for Municipal Services in the Northwest Territories—Department of Municipal and Community Affairs

Opening Statement to the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly Standing Committee on Government Operations

Support to Communities for Municipal Services in the Northwest Territories—Department of Municipal and Community Affairs

(2016 October Report of the Auditor General of Canada to the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly)

17 January 2017

Michael Ferguson, CPA, CA
FCA (New Brunswick)
Auditor General of Canada

Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for this opportunity to discuss our report on Support to Communities for Municipal Services in the Northwest Territories—Department of Municipal and Community Affairs. The report was tabled on October 25th in the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories. Joining me are members of the audit team: Jerome Berthelette, Glenn Wheeler, and Erin Jellinek.

Our audit focused on whether the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs adequately supported community governments in their delivery of key essential services—specifically, drinking water, waste management, fire protection, and emergency preparedness. We also examined the Department’s Community Government Accountability Framework and its School of Community Government.

Municipal services that meet the needs of residents are vitally important to the health and well-being of communities. Community governments are responsible for delivering essential services to their residents. Yet these essential services often have complex requirements, and many community governments struggle with capacity issues, which can affect service delivery.

The Department provides community governments with funding for these services. It also provides them with technical advice and training specific to their key responsibilities, as well as general assistance in their day-to-day delivery of essential services.

Overall, our audit found that the Department’s support to community governments was inadequate, and that it did not do enough to help them improve their delivery of some essential services or to mitigate risks to residents when service delivery was inadequate.

For example, the Department was aware that many community governments had inadequate waste management practices, including the improper handling and storage of hazardous waste by untrained facility operators. However, it did not do enough to help community governments manage the problem. As well, fire posed significant risk to the health and safety of residents, yet the Department did little to help community governments establish well-functioning fire protection services with enough trained firefighters and proper fire equipment. In fact, we found that the Department knew very little about the state of fire protection services in communities.

We also found that while the Department’s monitoring showed that most communities had emergency plans, the plans for 22 communities required updating, and the Department’s efforts to assist communities in updating these plans were limited. Updated plans are important to ensure that communities know how to best respond in an emergency situation such as a forest fire or a flood.

We did find that the Department’s support to community governments to help maintain safe drinking water was adequate.

We also found that the Community Government Accountability Framework significantly advanced accountability and transparency of the delivery of essential services by community governments. However, the Department did not adequately verify whether the information that community governments provided through the framework was accurate. This means that the Department did not have the information it needed to determine whether its support was clearly aligned with the most pressing needs of communities.

Finally, we found that the Department’s School of Community Government offered a range of training to community governments. However, some of the School’s courses were neither kept up to date nor periodically reviewed to ensure they met the needs of the community governments they were intended to serve.

Our audit findings are significant, and addressing them will enable the Department to better support community governments in their delivery of essential services that are key to the health and well-being of residents. We issued 13 recommendations aimed at improving its support, and the Department has agreed to all of them.

Mr. Chair, your Committee may wish to seek details from Department officials on how the Department intends to improve its support to community governments for delivery of key essential services.

This concludes my opening statement. I am happy to answer any questions you may have.