Michael Miltenberger

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that I will deliver the budget address on Thursday, February 6, 2014. Thank you.

I know the rules of the House are clear in terms of me reading a long, detailed response chronology that lays out all the events, so in order to respect those rules of the House, I will take the question as notice.

Of course, we will commit as a government, as a department to ensure that the people of Norman Wells are fully informed and conversant as to what is happening. In fact, they are key players that need to be involved and consulted, as well, on an ongoing basis as they have been to date. We want to continue that relationship.

In regards to the federal government, I will double check with the department once again, but my recollection is, if I look around the landscape, I see Norman Wells, I see the territorial government and I don’t see a lot of presence from the federal government on this...

Given the wonders of our communications system, as we speak in this House the Member can rest assured that staff are making notes, tracking the discussion here, and I’ll commit to the Member to report back to him before the end of this month, definitely before the end of session, so that we can have a discussion about what are the particulars and what is currently in place and what gaps there may be. Thank you.

We see this as a territory-wide issue, and once again, tomorrow as I present the budget, in the budget we articulate what our thinking is and our intent to involve Northerners across the board, and of course, in this House we’ll commit to full engagement of the committees and the Members opposite as we look at ways to address this issue in a constructive way.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are a number of areas that have been a source of persistent concern in regard to the issue that the Member raises. Things like the fly-in/fly-out population, things like our own vacancy rate, things like the amount of students that we pay to go to school, as the Member indicated in her opening comments, that we don’t recruit back here. We need to do a better job. We’ve put in place an immigrant Nominee Program, as well, that we believe needs to be improved and beefed up so that it can, in fact, help address some of the many jobs across government, not only across...

No, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There was a triggering event out on the line caused by some of the heavy icing events that occurred prior to the cold snap, causing one of the cross members to collapse. It had a line on it which triggered a series of cascading events. We were not alone in the country as we experienced all of these significant severe weather events. Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes, and on a comparative basis when you look at the three hours it took here to get things back and running compared to the, in many cases, weeks that it took in other jurisdictions, while it was unfortunate and...

Yes, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, as a government we have invested a significant amount of resources to start addressing this issue and we will continue to provide that support. I’ve made a commitment to the Member and I will honour that commitment. We will share that information and we will have a further more informed discussion. Thank you.