Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have both. We have some long-term debt with the bridge. We have other long-term debt against our borrowing limit that’s self-financing. As well, we have short-term debt. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is correct; there is still work being done on the framework and looking at how we would structure and fund such a fund. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, firstly, we work with the Government of the Northwest Territories where we have a huge interest in alcohol education, through Health, through Active Living, through all of those other programs. As a commission, we label all of the bottles. We have the bags that are marked. We do posters. We do ads about responsible drinking, as well, as I indicated, to try to make sure that what we are doing is supportive and ties into the work that has been done by government departments such as Health and Social Services and Education. Trying to really push, for example, not having pregnant...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At this point we are contributing $250,000 a year and there is a 20-year period where we can’t touch the principal.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would agree that we want to, in the coming year, as we look at increasing the amount of money we’re going to put into infrastructure, have a serious discussion how much of that money, that extra $50 million a year goes into energy infrastructure. We will be coming forward, as I have indicated a number of times now and the Premier has also made reference. We are going to come forward with a number of major initiatives, one tied to hydro in the North and South Slave focusing mainly initially on transmission and then we are, as well, going to lay out what we think is a...

That’s correct, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The subsidies are linked to the rates and as the rates of power go up, and we’ve been having the rate increases over the X number of years, even though they’ve been cushioned, the subsidy goes up commensurately, and they’re linked, so they’re going to keep moving together.

The criteria for the formula stay the same, so it’s still governed by things like tax effort and the amount of money spent in other jurisdictions. And their operations, as I indicated in my budget address, we anticipate with the deficit reduction going on across the land, that our formula could be affected negatively, but the criteria and all the elements of the formula have been left in place until 2018-19, but we’re still bound by those variables.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There has been significant improvement in terms of the time. We have met yearly, at least I meet yearly, the staff meets more often with the Audit Bureau, the audit folks, and we work with all the agencies that are supposed to be reporting in. We have shortened that timeline and are going to keep working on shortening it. There has been recognition of the improvement by the Auditor General, but I’ll ask the deputy if he wants to add anything further to that matter.

We get revised amounts monthly, but the date by which most returns are in is October, so October is a month we look to to get more certainty.