Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The costs are, of course, predicated on the assumption that the liquid natural gas prices are going to stay within the range that we have budgeted for, so yes, we anticipate that there will be less costs compared to synthetic natural gas compared to diesel. Should the day come when natural gas is available locally that is appropriate for use, then yes there could be another lowering of costs.

We are committed to the biomass piece. Seven hundred thousand dollars was voted in this last budget for Housing to do the work to determine and sort out some of the technical and...

Mr. Speaker, as a government, we have to balance many things, and we need to balance the environment and economic development and resource development. We have taken the appropriate steps to ensure we have the policy base that work is underway. We are, at the same time, recognizing that the world is not going to stand still and we need to maintain that balance as we catch up with our policy work. We are going to do that. We have looked very carefully, very thoroughly at the ConocoPhillips application and we are, once again, confident of what ConocoPhillips have put in their application in...

All the money that we haven’t already been given will flow at that point, yes. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the government is hard at work, along with working with community members, on the whole issue to do with fracking. We have been doing work now for the last six months or so. We have come up with a draft. It is a best practices policy paper which is being shared within governments and is being shared with the regulators. It is going to come back and be shared with committee. It identifies a lot of the critical best practices across industry. We believe that if they are complied with and they are clear, unequivocal and understandable, we will be able to manage and protect the...

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Yellowknife South, that Bill 23, Supplementary Appropriation (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 2, 2013-2014, be read for the third time.

Mr. Chair, one of the biggest numbers, of course, is we are carrying over money because we did hit some delays last year with the process. We anticipated that we would be farther along at that point and we weren’t, so we carried over that amount of money. We’ve been doing an enormous amount of work with the federal government, trying to get the numbers as they pertain to all the different budgets, all the positions here and in Ottawa, the legislative requirements, doing the work on the negotiations on waste sites. There has been an enormous amount of work done there, trying to first make sure...

Mr. Chair, there are capital upgrades of $380,000. The annual ongoing operation costs are estimated at $1.377 million plus $20,000 of one-time operation expenditures for training costs in 2013-14. Thank you.

In this case I would suggest that virtue would have to be its own reward, the savings that they would have in their own businesses, and the answer would be no.

I’m sticking to a seasonal target at this point, but by fall, September, October, we expect to have all the necessary steps covered. We want to, of course, do our briefing with committee, get feedback from committee, and it’s going to apply to standby charges as well. I would point out that the net metering and the change is going to be focused on thermal communities and initially to look specifically at solar.

Mr. Speaker, this Legislative Assembly has a vision of strong individuals, families and communities sharing the benefits and responsibilities of a unified, environmentally sustainable and prosperous Northwest Territories. Achieving that vision requires a balanced approach that advances our economic, environmental and social priorities and this government is moving forward on all those fronts.

Supporting economic development for Inuvik, and the whole Northwest Territories, by facilitating the construction of a fibre optic line up the entire length of the Mackenzie Valley to Tuktoyaktuk is one of...