Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The 2014-2015 Main Estimates for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources propose total operational expenses of $87.5 million for the upcoming year. This represents a 22 percent or a $16 million increase from last year’s budget primarily for increased program and services due to devolution.

The mandate of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources is to promote and support the sustainable use and development of our natural resources and to protect, conserve and enhance the environment for the social and economic benefit of all residents.

This mandate...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are various levels of environmental assessment and the boards that will be involved, the ones that assess and decide on the security that’s going to be required for whatever particular project, at that point ENR has a role to play as the project proceeds and as it gets close to its end days whether the fund has kept pace with costs and what needs to be done, and does what needs to be done match what was initially envisioned when the security deposit was set. But I’ll ask the deputy if he could add a bit more detail.

If there’s interest to share with committee, we could do that.

Thank you. I’m somewhat restricted in my ability to talk extensively about the outfitters; we are currently involved in litigation with a number of them. We are working our way through that process, but in terms of the future for the recovery of the herd, it depends on what the survey is going to tell us and we’ll have the numbers probably late 2015 or 2016. If the trends continue, I would suggest that the outlook for any type of commercial harvest in the Bathurst herd is going to be very bleak, that wherever there’s road access to herds the numbers have declined precipitously and the herds...

As the Minister of Lands and Minister of ITI have pointed out before this House, because their budgets were reviewed, the development assessment process we are putting in place, now that we’re going to be the regulator after April 1st, sees an integrated cooperative approach between the two departments chaired by the Minister of Lands. We will do the work on fracking and we will make sure that when it is put out for public feedback, we will consider the Member’s suggestion. We’ll be looking for feedback from people across the North but especially where it’s impacting in the Sahtu as well as...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, I think the category you want to look at would be the closing balance at the bottom. It’s projected at $1.892 million. Last year it was $1.742 million.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It won’t change what revenues we have projected. We control hunting licences and the federal government controls fishing licences, and there has been no change in fishing licences of any substantive nature for many, many years. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My note says photo PV systems will be added to diesel community grids as selected communities prefer. It ties in with the smart grid technology to help cover the costs of not only the smart grid technology but the solar requirements and now they have, as well, decided to include wind in that and batteries, so it’s going to be a very unique pilot project that is being watched with great interest by a lot of jurisdictions with remote communities. If we can make it work, we anticipate the penetration to be at least 50 percent of the diesel would be offset by wind, battery...

As has been pointed out by the Minister of ITI, after April 1st we will be the regulator and he will be the Minister responsible. The NEB’s existing policies and guidelines will stay in effect and the work that we are doing, in terms of reviewing fracking as a government that we’ve been looking at now for a number of months, will come forward sometime after April, that will look at improving upon what is currently there. But in the meantime, the National Energy Board policies and filing guidelines are what will be the policies of the day. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have focused the attention of the Environment Fund folks on the current recycling plus expanding into electronic waste. On our to-do list are things like barrels and vehicles. I was just mentioning to the deputy, I remember in Fort Smith last summer they came into the South Slave, I’m not sure if they made it to Yellowknife, but they came into town and we had mountains, literally, of fridges and stoves and washers and dryers and they shredded it all up and put it into cubes. I think they did Hay River as well. I’m not sure if they came to Yellowknife. But they didn...