Michael Miltenberger

Yes, Madam Chair. I am here to present Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2012-2013.

This document outlines an increase of $20.928 million in operations expenditures for the 2012-2013 fiscal year. The major items included in the supplementary estimates are:

$13.8 million to report two special warrants approved on July 31, 2012, and August 17, 2012, for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources for the increased costs being incurred due to the severe forest fire season in 2012;

$4.4 million to report a special warrant approved on August 17, 2012, for the Department...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The money is a target adjustment to the budget that reflects an underfunding situation for this contract that has been there for some time that has helped contribute, as the Minister of Health and Social Services pointed out, to the significant current deficit of the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority. This is recognition of that gap, that deficit in their base funding.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Kam Lake, that Bill 14, Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), 2013-2014, be read for the first time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With your indulgence, I’ll ask Minister Beaulieu to speak to the background issues related to this contract. Thank you.

Thank you. What I did say was that we are of the mind, as a government, that it’s not an appropriate time to be adding new tax burdens onto Northerners, that we struggle with cost of living issues in all of our communities, that it’s a challenge to businesses as well. So what we want to foster is a strong economy, which will give us more revenue as opposed to us as a government putting more taxes out there. So our focus has been on trying to put in infrastructure, look at how we do business to be as supportive as possible in an economically and environmentally sustainable way to encourage...

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Monfwi, that Bill 8, An Act to Amend the Securities Act, be read for the third time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. This has been an interesting exercise and there’s a number of key perspectives that we were looking for. We wanted feedback from the people of the Northwest Territories. We want to see what kind of responses we can get in terms of the things we’re now doing, which in this case confirm the focus that this Assembly has, for example, on prevention and the need to put more money into prevention, the need to sort out red tape, duplication program overlap, the need to look at how we add more money to our infrastructure budget. The other big issue is, of course, the support for sustainable...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Member’s concern. One of the impacts on our current circumstance was the $10 million we put into this project a number of months ago. The money we spent that we didn’t anticipate was extra money on the bridge, we spent extra money on a number of different areas. But we appreciate the Member’s concern. We are still going to hit our fiscal targets, as we laid out in our fiscal plan to the Members. Thank you.

As we approach this project, the decisions made to ask for the funds in increments so that we would be reporting back to the Legislature and justifying the expenses because of the interest and concern about the project, as opposed to asking for a large amount of money and then at some point in the future coming back. We chose to come forward on an as-required basis so that we would always be before the House as a check and balance to make sure Members were fully engaged. When we conclude this final $2 million worth of work, we will have the information we need to put a package before this...

Madam Chair, can I ask the Member to give me the number, how much more or less it is than the numbers before us, without quoting the exact number?

---Laughter