Michael Miltenberger

A response to some of the concerns, there is a Pathfinder in Inuvik, his name is Donald Andre and he’s there to provide that support in the region. I think there’s another one in Simpson and another one in Tlicho and Norman Wells.

There is wind energy. There’s $100,000 in wind energy but it got put in under the Alternative Energy Program. And we’ve had an expression of interest from Paulatuk. We did a lot of work in Tuk initially, but they sort of put their efforts into natural gas so Paulatuk indicated an interest.

The $200,000 in business support programs has been moved to the commercial...

Yes, as we come forward with the guidelines, they will be public. We are looking at best practices across the land, and full disclosure of fracking contents is one of those very critical issues so that there is awareness and understanding. As we try to manage the balance, between the environment and resource development, we have to know those critical factors. So as the guidelines go forward, that has been identified across the land as one of the best practices that jurisdictions are putting into place, and we are wanting to learn from other jurisdictions in terms of best practices. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the Member for his comments. This budget-making is an issue and it’s a process of making choices, of looking at a long list of demands with a finite amount of resources, and we’ve done that again this year. We’ve been on this budget now for about six months collectively, and we’ve tried to capture as much as we can with the funds that are available, and we’re here to have the discussion now about the pieces, the final pieces maybe that need work or that possibly need adjusting.

I appreciate the Member’s comments about the support for the projects. The liquid...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments and his ongoing attention to content and detail.

With regard to being more in debt, I would just point out once again, if you put us on a national comparative scale, we are one of the best managed and best run jurisdictions in the country with our debt to GDP ratio and the amount of interest to revenue that we are paying to service our debt. Most of our debt is self-liquidating.

We actually have about $150-some million or $180 million of actual debt that’s not, at this point, self-liquidating. We made a conscious point during extremely...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are three that are staffed, one is vacant. So there’s four total. Three staffed, one vacant and none of the incumbents have indicated they’re prepared to move; therefore, they will go on to the government’s Affected Employee Program. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member raises a concern that we should be putting more money into social programs, specifically health and social services. When I was Health Minister for five and a half years, I made the comment repeatedly that if you doubled the budget of health care, we’d be back within a year or a year and a half saying we need more to do all things for all people. I don’t think, looking to the fact that other jurisdictions are spending 40 to 45 percent of every dollar on health care, not social services, not housing, not anything else, is a sign of success. The reality is...

The Premier and Cabinet provided direction to the government from two departments to go back to their organizations and look at what could possibly be decentralized, and in a meaningful way that cohesive units or positions that would make sense that could easily function outside of Yellowknife. The BIP office was one of the suggestions brought forward. Some of the other departments were holding off pending the outcome of decentralization, for example. ENR and ITI, for example, are heavily caught up in that they go over land and water and resource development. So those will be looked at later...

Yes, Madam Chair.

Mr. Chairman, I’ll get Mr. Aumond. He has the list of the positions. We’ll just take a second to go through the list. Thank you.

This challenge is a game of inches where we look for success in often, sometimes, very small increments. In this case, the Minister of Health and Social Services has struck a panel, a very blue chip panel, made up of Northerners to provide those recommendations.

Yes, we do work together as a government. We work together as a Cabinet, as an Assembly, to try to make the best decisions possible with the resources we have available. We will look, with great interest, at the recommendations of that panel. The Minister of Health and Social Services will be coming back to us with those recommendations...