Joe Handley

Mr. Speaker, if we were to do the program that Mrs. Groenewegen’s referring to it would either be done through the Housing Corporation or it could be done through ENR, that would be another possibility, or a combination of departments. We did have programs similar to that in the past where we assisted people to buy things like solar panels and turbines and so on. This is something more specific and, Mr. Speaker, with the support of Members, then of course our government is ready to look at this kind of good program. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have assigned the following portfolio responsibilities until such time as this Legislative Assembly appoints a new Member to the Executive Council.

The Deputy Premier, the honourable Floyd Roland, will take responsibility for Health and Social Services and will be the Minister responsible for Seniors, the Minister responsible for Persons with Disabilities and will assume lead responsibility for the homeless. I will assume responsibility for Environment and Natural Resources. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are negotiating with the federal government and with Imperial. No doubt, Imperial, or Exxon who owns most of them, make profits. That's what those businesses do. But, Mr. Speaker, we are insisting with the federal government that they work with us to conclude an agreement-in-principle on devolution and resource revenue sharing within a matter of months. Mr. Speaker, we need their commitment to do that, otherwise, as I said, our support for these kind of big projects is questionable why we're doing it. Mr. Speaker, on resource revenues we're saying agree to an...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said, we will look at it. We want to know, we want to try and figure out ourselves what is the profit on this project. If there is huge profit, then we need our fair share of it. Mr. Speaker, I don't have a quarrel either with companies making a lot of money on these projects, but we do want our share and right now we have no commitment to have our share and it becomes increasingly difficult to support these kinds of projects if we're not getting a fair share of the resource revenues.

Mr. Speaker, I will certainly do that. I’m not sure of the exact wording we’ll use, but we will do it and make the point that we don’t have adequate funding. As I mentioned in the sessional statement, the current situation just simply is not sustainable and we have to get that message to the federal government, whether it’s through reinstating this money or a combination of this plus, as I say, the resource revenues. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I agree with the Member; all of us were offended by having these cuts just announced. The federal government told us that this was treated like a budget, that it was all done in secret, and we weren’t the only jurisdiction. All jurisdictions across Canada were not given any information on it. It was a surprise to everybody the day it happened.

Mr. Speaker, since that time we have been trying to get clarification on all of the different budget cuts and some of it we still don’t know because there’s no detail when it comes to things like cutting departmental...

Mr. Speaker, yes, that is still our intention to have that unit delivered this fall; hopefully in November.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We're very aware of some of these issues that appear in some communities, and certainly the issues in Liard have been brought to our attention. Mr. Speaker, there's a couple of things we want to do. One of them, of course, is to give the local leaders in the community more authority to be able to determine how the houses are to be allocated, the sequence for repairing, for replacing and so on. Mr. Speaker, I think it doesn't matter if it's a teacher's house or a house for someone else who's in need of accommodation. We need to have the maximum amount of input from...

If all we're getting is a little bit of corporate tax, a little bit of property tax and some payroll tax, and a lot of people may be getting jobs, that is still not enough. We know there's resource revenues that the federal government will benefit from on this project for a long, long time, and we need to get that share. I have stayed adamant with the federal government that any support for these kind of projects has to be tied to a fair share for us. The Prime Minister, in fact, has said that; now he's got to act on it.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a copy of the presentation that was made; we've seen some media reports on it. We're doing a review of it now to try to figure out how they arrived at the numbers they have. If it is $17 billion profit, I agree with the Member, that is a lot of profit. Thank you.