Jane Groenewegen

Thank you, Premier McLeod. Moving on with our general comments on the capital budget, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Premier McLeod. Is committee agreed?

Agreed. We will resume with that after a short break.

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Good afternoon, or is it still morning? I’d like to call Committee of the Whole to order. Yesterday when we left off, we were on general comments on Tabled Document 107-17(4), and that’s where we left off. I’d like to ask, what is the wish of committee. Ms. Bisaro.

Mr. Speaker, people of Hay River will be very glad to hear that. That does seem like that is a fairly prudent direction to take, a good choice.

Another issue that has been raised in this House before, which I would also like an update on, was a request for a functional review of the existing H.H. Williams Memorial Hospital, to determine whether or not that building would be suitable to be re-profiled for some other use and to be kept as a piece of infrastructure in our community as something other than a health facility. I would like to ask the Minister if he has an update on where that request...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank the Premier for that answer. It’s a win-win for everybody. It has the potential to offset the high cost of living in the North. It has the potential to be the impetus for development in these mining operations that the Premier refers to. I hope that the Premier will really run with this and keep us apprised.

We need a development like the Taltson expansion in the South Slave. We need something. We need devolution to mean something for our people.

Will the Premier take up this particular project with his Cabinet colleagues and report back to us on...

Mr. Speaker, the Premier speaks of our borrowing limit and how that sometimes restrains us. In the past when we talked about projects like the Taltson Hydro expansion, we also talked about public funds combined with private investment, to see something like this go ahead. I was involved in those discussions. It seemed like a lot of that expansion kind of got all mixed in with transmission lines over the East Arm of Great Slave Lake and transmitting hydro to the diamond mines and so on. There was a real interest from the private sector in investing in the expansion of the Taltson Dam and I...

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be back here in the Legislative Assembly. It seems like we were gone for a long time.

Mr. Speaker, today I wanted to just touch on a few items related to devolution. The Premier has highlighted some of these benefits in his sessional statement that he just provided. He’s talked about jobs and he’s talked about the control of land and water and resources. I think we need to keep our eye on the big picture here. The revenues from royalties and the positions that will transfer to the North are, of course, a wonderful benefit and we’d like to see more of...

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.