Michael Miltenberger

Mr. Speaker, it isn’t very often we can say that weather forecasters were spot-on with their projections; however, this fire season it seems they got it right.

The fire season started very early. In fact, it may be one of the earliest on record. It seemed like the 2014 fire season just spilled over into 2015. There were several hold-over fires from the 2014 season, fires that burned deep over the winter. By early June the numbers and frequency of fire occurrences were record setting. The effect of extended drought was really evident through the South Slave, Deh Cho and North Slave regions. Fire...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The fiscal reality is what is driving us all and it’s evidenced quite clearly in the capital plan and we have a much longer list of infrastructure projects than we have money. The issue of prioritizing or having to make choices is always before us. So I appreciate the Member’s frustration on some of these requests.

The Willow River, I’m not sure what the opportunities are. I haven’t talked fully to the Minister of Transportation if there are ways, but we’re now faced with political choices and we’ve capital planned and flexed the process and everything has been through...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll respond to some of them and then I’ll ask Mr. Guy to respond to the Woodland Manor and update requested on the health centre and Mr. Neudorf to touch on dredging.

The municipal funding, as we put it out yesterday, has been kept at $28 million, in spite of our attempts to do passive restraints but it’s important to protect that funding.

The issue of building Highway No. 1 to the border and the need to increase widening, I’ll note that as well.

I’ll ask, once again, Mr. Guy to touch on the other schools that possibly need upgrades. The French schools, we’re not in a...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, I do have witnesses.

This is a consensus government that we operate in. There are mandate letters given to each Minister by the Premier. We work closely with committees. We have reviews of business plans. Of course, we are, in effect, a minority government and we serve at the pleasure of the Legislative Assembly. We have numerous checks and balances in terms of making sure that ministerial accountability is upheld.

We’re turning our attention here as we conclude the capital plan, of course, to planning and being involved in the transition process to identify issues and challenges. As part of that, there will be a proposed legislative agenda, so we are prepared to look at policies that are outdated. We’ve agreed to renew, for example, legislation that we adopted as mirror legislation as part of devolution. This policy, and I agree with the Member, it’s time for it to be looked at and, as he has indicated, formalized in a much more big P way.

The final harvest decisions on an interim basis will be done before the middle of October. We are in discussions now with all the impacted and affected Aboriginal governments, programs and boards, our Department of ENR. So that will be done.

In the longer term, we are hoping to get the Bluenose-East Management Plan up and running finally. I believe now that the conditions are right, where we can get the attention and interest of all affected parties to gather around the table to work on an ongoing, longer-term plan on the Bathurst herd, which is in the most dire straits. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

That issue came up during the Jay pipe hearings. The issue of cumulative impact was a directly contributable effect in terms of fatalities on a regular basis. It’s one that has not been clearly defined. There have been changes made as issues have been raised in terms of the road access, how the road is used, how the traffic flows, the ability of the herd to cross the road. So, there is continuing work as we look at that particular issue. Thank you.

Forecasters are already looking at large-scale global weather models and into forecasts for next year. Forecasters are predicting an El Nino winter, warm with limited precipitation which, depending on the actual outcome, may affect our water levels for next season. It seems that the drought through the NWT will continue.

As such, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, or ENR, will continue to be proactive and ready itself for the next fire season. A debrief of this year’s lesson learned will take place in the fall and public meetings will take place over the winter.

The rollout of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In regards to the red flag lists, what has happened, the amount of money in the capital plan is varied and we went, most recently, from one hundred and twenty-five back down to seventy-five, which meant that things on the list had to be re-prioritized. You can only do a certain number with $75 million, which is a very small amount of money when you have an overall budget of $1.8 billion and we do have input throughout this process with Regular Members and one of the things where we could point to is the ratio over the money for the Build Canada Plan was switched to put a...