Bob Bromley

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate that response. I wonder if the Minister would commit to giving committee a briefing on that and the contributions from the various measures we have been taking and a real look at… If our hopes are denied by the federal government, what are the realities and what progress are we making on our own at addressing those?

At the same time, I would just like to ask, the last couple of fiscal years, $14 million, almost $15 million each year, a little bit more last year than in this current fiscal year, and this year $31.4 million, a doubling. I’d like a quick...

Madam Chair, thanks to the Minister for those remarks. It is great to hear about the Ndilo/Detah projects. Those are this fiscal year rather than next. I look forward maybe to getting an update a year after they get operational so we can hear what lessons are being learned and applied. It sounds like there are not any more new ones being proposed for this coming fiscal year, but maybe the following fiscal year. Thank you. That is all I have.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to table the Status of Women’s three questions to NWT candidates on severe shortage of quality and affordable child care which exists throughout the NWT, and the response of all candidates including many in this House today. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for that. I know the Minister is well aware of the phenomenon such as the City of Yellowknife is investing quite a bit in composting and, through that, extending the life of their landfill and avoiding those upfront costs for another year or two or 10 or 20. That’s the phenomenon I’m speaking of here when I ask is the Minister working with government facilities and other departments as the community contemplates having a renewable source of electricity that will replace a lot of fossil fuels, and thereby avoid need for expensive renovations and upgrading to large...

I guess that is recognition that the fracking education workshops are a partial education indeed. As we learned in North Dakota, the cumulative environmental and social impacts of fracking are very much related to how many wells were fracked and the rate at which we permit this development. So under devolution, could the Minister explain how much authority the GNWT will have to control the scale and pace of that development; that is, who will say this is too much and how will we decide that. Mahsi.

Thanks to the Minister. I think that’s exactly what I wanted to hear. As we go down the road, the low-hanging fruit hopefully will be taken care of and some of our building practices will ensure that we have top grade and we don’t need to be retrofitting with the same degree of frequency. It would be nice to know that there is some thought being given to build for the more chewier problems we have along the way.

I brought this up once before and I don’t believe I got a response, so perhaps Mr. Guy would have the term I’m seeking here. There is an American engineer’s standard for energy. It’s...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. I would like to chat about fracking in the Sahtu. This week the Minister of ITI explained that it was the responsibility of ENR to look at the social and environmental impacts of fracking.

I am wondering: How is our ENR Minister working to ensure that fracking projects such as those being promoted by ITI are sustainable? By sustainable, I mean that we are looking at the three pillars of sustainability: economic, social and environmental. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I mentioned, I’ve been bringing this up for seven years now. Just a little bit on the history. The original construction of the Detah road was very shaky and I know the department is aware of this. It was actually thrown in very quickly at the recommendation of the member of the royalty that had visited Detah during the springtime during the breakup and ended up having a harrowing dog team ride across the deteriorating ice. So he was motivated to lobby very hard and, successfully, this road was put in, but it was put in without much planning or engineering and so on...

Thanks to the Minister for that. I guess I would appreciate it. I know that discussion with Mr. Yakeleya was interesting and appropriate here. I would like to expand that to the NWT, and obviously I’m very interested in Detah and Ndilo, as well as Yellowknife and so on.

Could we also get what the plan is for new child care facilities at the same time when the Minister provides that information? I understand that inspections are on their way now, but as soon as that’s available, if we can get the plan perhaps brought to committee or some sort of commitment there in the near future. Obviously...

Yeah, baloney, Mr. Chair, to the Minister. That’s absolute baloney. We can move dollars around.

The Minister and his staff so far have used three years, four years and five years for this project, depending on what they find with different things, studies that are underway now. So we can simply decide to do this over a longer period of time. We can decide to push for that in this agreement so that we can afford to do the maintenance that’s required in our highway system across the Northwest Territories. Certainly not all of it, but we can contribute significant amounts.

I guess this is the...