Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There’s a major piece of legislation that has to be redone. That’s the Forest Management Act. It’s a major legislative undertaking. Some preliminary work will get done in the life of this government, but it will be carried through to conclusion in the life of the 18th Assembly. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ll try to take that on a positive note and not parts of it and say, well, it’s a bad budget but it’s not that bad, as opposed to it’s not bad in the colloquial vernacular meaning eh, it’s pretty good.

In regards to the hydro – in fact we indicated this before Christmas – we have work underway both for a technical review as well as a business case review of the power system plan, if the route is technically feasible, getting some solid cost estimates and then working on the business case once we have some of those numbers in.

Further work will be done on that process but...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are at work on the Heritage Fund and we will come to a successful conclusion. If I have misstated the support for junior kindergarten, I will use other examples of the input and involvement and significant influence that MLAs have on this process overall.

We agree there are too many fly-in/fly-out workers, which is why we struck a high level committee. We set a target of trying to increase our population by 2,000 in five years, and one of the things we want to look at – there are a number of things; there are four things, actually, we want to look at – the fly-in/fly...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Member for his comments on the Heritage Fund. We just remind the folks that are listening that this is what we do agree on. We agree on a Heritage Fund because we spent three years in the 16th Assembly putting a bill into place that would give us the legal authority and looking forward to the day that devolution would be upon us. We know we have to put money aside and the one figure that the Member didn’t say, and there were some folks that said it, more than one, and more than one community, that we shouldn’t put any aside, that we need it all today, but...

Yes, we are engaged in short-term borrowing and some long-term borrowing, as I laid out in my budget address yesterday. When you look at all the numbers and when you look at the capital plan, the O and M budget, the things we are trying to do, we end up with $142 million left between ourselves and the $800 million borrowing limit. We’ve added to our borrowing to meet some of the objectives that we’ve laid out as a government and as a Legislative Assembly. So for the next five years, we are going to be in a cash deficit situation to manage our way through what are going to be some very big...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. As I tried to lay out in the budget yesterday, we look at what our revenue is, what our projected revenue is and look at what our expenditures are. Within the budget, we’ve already committed to fund, in capital, over $200 million of capital projects. This O and M budget, because we are required under our Fiscal Responsibility Policy to put aside the required amount to offset that, we are supposed to put half our money in savings. We’ve done that. So all our expenditures and the borrowing we’ve done to fund all the projects, all our expenses, leave us at $142 million...

Thank you. That, of course, is a given. We have a very able group of MLAs that bring forward those opinions and, yes, I will do the rounds. In the first budget dialogue and the feedback sessions we had, for example, we talked about where we should put our focus with the limited funds that are available, and they gave us some good advice that we’ve built into our first budget and our second budget. We’ve received some very helpful advice on this go around, as well, including on the Heritage Fund. So, yes, we will obviously, and clearly, commit. We always take that feedback into consideration...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. In our system of government, we do annual budgets and the government puts a budget before the House. In effect, the government proposes and the Legislature disposes.

We started this process, as the Member said, many long months ago to set this budget in place. We’ve talked about what we were putting forward as what in our estimation was the best way to move forward to balance all the demands with expenditures, revenues, projects, infrastructure versus programs and services, all those issues. We have put before this House a document that lays that out, and now we’re...

Thank you. I don’t think it’s a case of anybody being bad guys. We are looking at a budget. We agree on the Heritage Fund, we agree on keeping the money out of programs and services, we agree to put some in the Heritage Fund, some in capital and some for debt repayment. Now we’re having a spirited, healthy debate about how much and how do we manage that along with all the other obligations we have and the factors and the variables we have to look at that are financial pressures on us.

In terms of corporate income tax, as we’ve laid out a number of times, it’s a very complicated process. The...

No, we did not ignore that request. We have spent a lot of time consulting, working with committee on the main estimates that are before this House. In my budget address, we laid out what we used in calculating and determining that budget, and one of those factors was as we looked at all the variables that are before us, the challenges, the financial issues, we saw the way forward as a government with 5 percent, recognizing that we had to meet these other objectives as well.

The committee recommended to us 25 percent. We heard that, as well, in other parts of the territory as well as we heard...